


No Such Mirrors

by solomonara



Series: Chaos Theory [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Batfam Bonding, Canon Divergence, Gen, Mentions of Past Torture, Mentions of canon character death, Parallel Universes, chaos lord dick grayson, dimension hopping, dimension swapping, just the barest hint of jaydick, lots of tying people up, sounds more impressive than he actually is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-01 10:09:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13996020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solomonara/pseuds/solomonara
Summary: Years ago, Nightwing tangled with Klarion and came away shaken but ultimately unscathed. Most versions of Nightwing across the multiverse were that lucky. One was not. His escape cost dearly and he's still running – right across dimensions, into a world where one of those lucky versions of himself has everything he lost.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in 2018. Jason Todd's alive and, for the purposes of this fic, made his return almost immediately after the last episode of season 2. Assume that all went down pretty much exactly as it happened in the _Under the Red Hood_ movie.
> 
> This is a sequel to [Ends, Means, and In-Betweens](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11792688/chapters/26596110) \- read that first!
> 
> Thanks, as always, to [DragonSorceress22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonsorceress22) for her excellent beta work, without which you would all be drowning in commas and other sins.

"…you have no such mirrors as will turn  
Your hidden worthiness into your eye  
That you might see your shadow."

_\- Julius Caesar, Act I Scene 2_

 

Gotham was quiet for a change. It was just the usual sounds of traffic, sirens, people, night clubs, bars, slamming doors, and blaring advertisements. No explosions, no emergency broadcasts, no lasers or gunfire or giant monsters. Quiet.

From the roof of City Hall it was even almost peaceful.

"We should invite Jason," Nightwing said. Batgirl and Robin exchanged looks. The three of them had met on the corner of the building, where there was plenty of space between the dome rising from the center of the roof and the ledge overlooking downtown Gotham.

 "What?" said Nightwing at their skeptical looks. "He's been homicide-free for like, a year now."

"He's… a little unpredictable," Batgirl ventured.

 _That's exactly why we should,_ Nightwing thought. He couldn't blame Barbara or Tim for being leery. They hadn't known Jason before, not really. Barbara had interacted with him a few times on masked business and Tim had tailed along at a distance with that camera, but neither of them had really known him. Hell, Dick hadn't either. That was why he'd started these informal gatherings in the first place after Jason's death. Once a month at least, just him and Batgirl, and then just him and Batgirl and Robin once Tim had joined up. Dick didn't ever want one of them to hesitate to ask for help, wanted to be able to tell if something was going on in their lives – masked or otherwise.

So he made an effort. Once a month, no matter what, he'd drag them up here and they'd just pass the time above the city, talking, sometimes chasing and training a bit among the skyscrapers, but always just them. Batman wasn't invited.

"Roy vouched for him," Nightwing said.

"Which Roy?" Robin asked.

"Both."

"…I'm not sure if that's better or worse," Robin said. Batgirl was lounging on the gargoyle that crouched in this corner of the building, elbows on its head and chin resting in her hands, watching the traffic patterns below. Robin leaned against its side, arms crossed, while Nightwing paced back and forth on the ledge next to them.

"Better, probably," Batgirl said brightly, not turning from her view. Robin peered over the edge to see if he could see what she apparently found so engrossing. "They don't agree on much. I knew Red Hood was working with Arsenal, but are they teaming up with Red Arrow now, too?"

"Now there's a stable combination," Robin remarked. Nightwing didn't answer and Batgirl twisted around on her gargoyle to see if Robin's comment had annoyed him.

He was gone.

Her eyes immediately darted over the ledge and she craned forward on the gargoyle, heart racing, even though she _knew_ Nightwing hadn't fallen. Nightwing didn't fall, not ever. She could tell Robin's eyes were wide behind his mask.

"What the hell?" he asked.

"I don't… I wasn't paying that close attention, but I don't think even Batman could have pulled a vanish from there without one of us noticing," Batgirl said. She activated the standard bat-family communication frequency. "Batgirl to Nightwing. Where'd you go?"

No response.

"I reiterate: What the hell?" Robin said. Batgirl cycled through other coms channels – Justice League, the Team, military – checking for chatter about anything else unusual happening. There was nothing big.

"Odds that he vanished voluntarily?" Batgirl ventured, without much hope. Robin snorted.

"No way. Even if he was annoyed, he's been thinking about having this talk with us for a while. You can tell by way he brought it up out of nowhere and tried to be all casual about it. No way he bails without talking us around," Robin said.

"Right. Well. Guess we'd better find him."

*

At the precise moment Nightwing vanished from Gotham, a being of chaos and magic crashed to his knees hundreds of miles away on Roanoke Island amidst a crackle of black and blue sparking energy, unsure for the moment exactly who he was. It was not an unfamiliar feeling for him. His brain shuffled through the identities he'd held, rejecting each until he shook the glitter from the edges of his vision and took hold of himself.

 _Dick_ , he thought. _Still me._ Part of him wasn't sure about that, but he didn't need to be sure. Privileges of chaos. There weren't many of those, not for him, so he'd take what he could get.

The last of the energy threads snapped back to him, blending with the black and blue of his suit, sinking into the emblem across the chest. It might once have been a bird, but what would have been the wings were shattered, stretching up over his shoulders and trailing shards of blue down his back. The sharp points of his mask flared out and settled, curling toward his hair and trailing across his cheeks like someone had cracked his face open only to reveal a void.

Dick passed a hand over his eyes, willing his mask under control so it looked more like a mask and less like an abyss. He got to his feet, brushed the dirt from his knees, and glanced around hopefully. After such a wild discharge of energy, he was almost certain he'd been successful. He definitely _felt_ like he'd flung his atoms through the walls separating universes, which had been the goal.

He was standing in a clearing that looked exactly the same as it had fifteen minutes and one wild discharge of energy previously.

"Fuck," said Dick. Back to the drawing board. Back to _Klarion_. His mouth twisted and he reached for his power, determined to avoid Klarion for as long as possible but grimly aware that he wasn't nearly skilled or powerful enough to get away completely, as was evidenced by the fact that he was still in the same damn dimension.

But his power – some deep, dark well fueled by the spaces between his cells and his soul, or something to that effect, chaos magic wasn't big on _details_ – lurched out of his reach and the plane he was inhabiting seemed to tip and Dick found himself on his back, staring up at the sky.

He blinked. Then he grinned. He could see it now, or taste it, or smell it, or something. This wasn't home. Not at all.

Dick sat up and gathered magic again, more carefully this time. It was like he was a slightly out of tune radio, much of the signal scattered and warbling. He needed an anchor, that much he knew. Once he had that, he'd like to see Klarion try dragging him back. And if the rest of this dimension looked as similar to his home dimension as this clearing, he knew just where to begin his search.

 *

"Now there's a stable combination," Robin snarked. Nightwing opened his mouth to defend the Reds, but before he could get a word out Robin and Batgirl vanished, so quickly and so abruptly that Nightwing's brain spent seconds trying to convince his eyes they were still there. He blinked rapidly and stepped off the ledge back onto the roof. There had been no sound, no smoke, no warning. They were just _gone_.

"Batgirl, Robin, report," he said to the Gotham coms channel. He got nothing back and frowned. Batman was at the Watchtower at the moment, and he was pretty sure Red Hood wasn't in town, but both sometimes monitored the channel anyway. Apparently not right now, though. He switched to the Team frequency and was startled by a high burst of static. He shut it off with a yelp. _That_ was odd. Something was off. He'd head to the Batcave and borrow the equipment there to find out what.

He'd just stepped back onto the ledge to fire a line off into the night when a shadow swooped down from the City Hall cupola behind him. He turned.

"B," he said. If Batman had returned from the Watchtower ahead of schedule, that meant something was _definitely_ wrong, and Batman probably already knew what. "Do you know what happened to Batgirl and Robin?"

Batman's jaw clenched and he took a single step toward Nightwing, obviously restraining himself. "If you've hurt them," he growled.

Nightwing blinked. "If I… B, it's me," he said, raising his hands in front of himself. He forced himself not to increase the distance between him and Batman, not to show fear or anything that might be perceived as guilt. He could read anger in every visible line of Batman's body and the hard line of his mouth. "Why would I hurt them?"

Batarangs sprouted between the fingers of Batman's right hand, which Nightwing knew meant he was going for something more dangerous with the left hand hidden in the folds of his cape. Nightwing fired the line he'd been preparing over Batman's head, tethering it to the dome and yanking himself out of the way just as the batarangs flew. He landed on the side of the dome, feet braced, still hanging on to the line to keep himself there. Run or engage?

Engage, definitely. He needed answers. But he was very aware Batman hadn't played whatever was in his other hand yet.

"Relax, B, I just want to talk," he called down to Batman, who was still standing on the narrow flat portion of the roof, looking up at him. Fear gas, maybe? Something of Ivy's?

"We're past that," Batman ground out. He hurled another batarang and Nightwing kicked off, using his line to swing out of the way. He intended to loop around to the other side of the cupola to put the dome between them, but realized a fraction of a second too late that the batarang hadn't been aimed at him at all. It sliced through his line and he shot out of control over the edge of the roof.

 Luckily, this was Gotham, so it wasn't far to the neighboring building. It was taller than City Hall and Nightwing crashed into its fire escape, catching himself on a railing and barely missing a beat before hauling himself up and up again. If he was going to face off against Batman, he wanted open air and a lot of options for running.

He flipped onto the roof – this one just a standard, flat, gravely expanse – and of course Batman was waiting for him. Nightwing jerked backward as a gauntleted fist came for his face. He narrowly avoided it, turning the backward motion into a flip that had him balancing briefly on the edge of the building on his hands. When had Batman started putting the metal reinforcements on the outside?

He reversed his momentum and launched himself at Batman feet-first, not actually expecting to hit him. He'd use Batman's necessary dodge to draw his escrima sticks. He'd wanted to avoid escalating, but the thought had just occurred to him that this might be an imposter.

But Batman didn't dodge. He took the hit directly to the chest and used the opportunity to grab Nightwing by the ankles before he could kick off. Batman whipped him downward and his back collided with gravel, knocking the breath from him. Batman was on top of him before he could force his body to move.

Heavy cuffs snapped around Nightwing's wrists.

"What?" he managed to gasp out. Not what he had been expecting at all. The cuffs were thick, dark metal bands covering four or five inches of his forearms, connected to each other by a short iron bar rather than a chain. They were etched with silver symbols, but Nightwing didn't have time to inspect them before Batman gripped his arms and hauled him to his feet. Maybe this really _wasn't_ Bruce, because if he thought binding Nightwing's hands was enough to incapacitate him, he'd gravely miscalculated.

Nightwing let Batman pull him up, then continued the movement to shove a shoulder into Batman's chest, hooking a leg behind one of Batman's. Batman stumbled but didn't let go of Nightwing's arm, letting himself fall backward but throwing Nightwing over himself, helped along with a boot to the torso. It wasn't _comfortable,_ but Nightwing caught himself on his feet in a crouch and was sprinting for the edge of the roof even as Batman rose behind him. He could still ride a line with his hands cuffed, and he pulled out a grapple intending to do just that. There was air between his feet and the roof before the line even connected and for a brief moment he was in flight, seconds from escape.

Batman's bolas snapped around his ankles and he faltered, fouling his trajectory. That was okay, he told himself, even as he plunged more quickly than he'd meant to. The line would still connect to something, and he could recover from just about any—

The solid, unyielding bulk of Batman struck him from the air. Batman had tethered a line of his own and was now swooping across a busy thoroughfare with Nightwing tucked under his arm. Nightwing had dropped his own line, but even if he hadn't he had no doubt Batman would have cut it. Even if he had another grapple gun on him, he had no desire to get into a tug-of-war with Batman. He knew who'd win. He had little choice but to hang on and hope this really was Bruce behind the mask, at least until they were a little closer to solid ground.

Batman dragged him all the way across Gotham, right back to the Batcave, crushing any attempt Dick made to escape with brutal efficiency. By the time they arrived in the cave – Batman had eventually tossed him into the passenger seat of the Batmobile and activated the secure restraints, the ones he kept for transporting supercriminals – Nightwing was aching and bewildered because he was now certain that this was indeed Bruce, but no drug he knew would cause behavior like this.

"Bruce, _please,_ " Nightwing said as Bruce deactivated the restraints and dragged him out of the car. Batman shoved him in the direction of the holding cells and Nightwing dug in his heels. "Just stop, talk to me, what is going on? What did I do?"

"Move," Batman ordered.

" _No_ ," Nightwing said. Batman considered him for half a second, then made to grab his arm. Nightwing spun out of the way but Batman's leg snapped out, catching Nightwing's feet out from under him. An obvious move, one Nightwing might have avoided at the beginning of the night, but at this point it was all he could do to stumble slightly and not completely fall over. At least until Batman rammed an elbow into his back and drove him to his knees. Then Batman bent in front of Nightwing, grabbed the connecting piece on those strange cuffs, and straightened, simply dragging Nightwing behind him toward the cells. Nightwing's suit protected his knees from being scraped raw against the stone floor, but he couldn't quite get his feet under him at Batman's pace, not with his arms stretched out at that painfully awkward angle.

"Bruce," Nightwing said desperately. "Something's not right here. Where is everyone? Does Alfred know you're doing this? What's—" He stopped mid-sentence, gaping as Batman dragged him past something that definitely should _not_ have been in the cave.

_A Good Soldier_

"Why is _that_ here?"

Batman finally stopped and let go of Nightwing's hands. Nightwing got to his feet, dismayed at how deeply he could feel the bruises settling into his muscles but determined to get to the bottom of whatever was happening. Batman turned to face him, slowly. The cowl turned to the glass case, the one Bruce had removed the plaque from and stored with all the other old versions of their suits months ago.

"Bruce?"

He didn't even see the fist coming and felt only a brief explosion of pain before blacking out.

 *

Dick transported himself to Happy Harbor first, but was disappointed to find Mount Justice… gone. Violently gone, it would seem. Well _that_ was different. Was there even a Team in this world? Some part of him, a younger part that hadn't learned its lesson, wanted to seek out a library, an internet connection, find out what had happened in this world, ground himself in context. The chaos magic roiling inside him _hated_ that idea. _Move, move, move,_ it prodded him. _No plans no study no time._

He felt himself fuzzing at the edges and grimaced. Klarion had once told him his brain didn't bend right. That had been back when Dick had been human, and while infusing himself with the myriad vortex of chaos had certainly helped his brain bend in new and different ways, sometimes those old patterns of thought still tried to reassert themselves.

Dick got a lot of headaches.

He scuffed at the dust in the ruins of the mountain a bit, used his heel and a little burst of flight to draw a huge bat in the dirt, then transported himself in a blink to Gotham. If he was going to find a viable candidate for an anchor, that was the next closest spot. Surely the Bats inhabited Gotham in every universe.

He landed himself on the roof of police headquarters, perched atop the dark batsignal. He debated turning it on, but Batman was most definitely not his target. Imagine being tethered to _that_ for all of eternity. Blech. He was more interested in tracking down Tim and Barbara; they could tell him where to find this world's version of his old Team, though if this world's version of Barbara was similar enough to his, she might make a good anchor herself. If not, he'd try Wally, though he was a little hesitant to attempt mixing that stubborn scientist brain with chaos magic. Either way, he'd get the information out of Batgirl and Robin more easily than he could from Batman. No one here would know to be on guard against him.

 

He'd been hunting around Gotham in widening circles from the police station for about half an hour, becoming more and more impatient. Why was Gotham so _quiet_ tonight? He needed a nice, noisy crime to bring the little bats running. He was standing on the roof of a tenement building, considering blowing something up, when he sensed someone behind him.

"Hey," said a male voice, slightly modulated. Dick turned, curious. A well-muscled man in a red helmet that covered his entire face was standing behind him. He wore black body armor that looked bat-issue, a brown leather coat, and, _wow_ , a lot of guns. Most of them were out of sight, but just because some parts of Dick's training were incompatible with chaos magic didn't mean all of them were.

"Hey yourself," he said with a lazy smile. The guy cocked his head to the side. The helmet reminded Dick of something, of someone, not someone he knew, but had heard of. A villain from his Gotham's past. Red Hood, that was it. This universe still had one? Fascinating.

"What's with the costume change?" Red Hood asked.

"Do you like it?" Dick responded. He didn't know what his counterpart's relationship with this Red Hood was supposed to be, but from what he could see the guy was hot. Worth exploring.

"You're acting weird. I heard Batgirl call you on the coms earlier and you didn't answer. Talk go that bad?"

Dick could see the minute adjustments in Red Hood's posture that said he was suspicious and putting his hands near unseen weapons. Oh well.

"I'm not Nightwing," he said, not caring enough to lie. "But I am looking for Batgirl. You wouldn't happen to know where she is?"

Red Hood had two guns trained on him before he finished his question, but he hadn't fired. Stupid.

"Is that a no?" Dick asked. He waved a hand and a spear of energy lanced through the air. Red Hood had started firing and moving as soon as he made the gesture, though, and the projectile missed, dissolving into sparks when Dick tried to redirect it. That was all right, though. He was already moving in tandem with Red Hood, using just a touch of chaos to make shots go wide around him and laughing the whole time. When he realized guns wouldn't work, Red Hood holstered them and pulled something from his belt. Dick had just enough time to wonder what kind of weird Batman fanboy this guy was when he found himself engulfed in a cloud of impenetrable smoke, which just made him laugh harder. He had so many more senses now, it was no trouble at all to catch Red Hood's punch long before it hit him, turn with Hood's momentum, and send him sailing on his way across the roof. He waved a hand and the smoke dissipated as though it had never been.

Red Hood had already rolled to one knee and flung a batarang – or, not _quite_ a batarang, the shape was a little different – at Dick to buy himself some space, but Dick just glared at it and it whirled around and shot right back at Red Hood. It struck that ridiculous helmet and a large shard cracked away over the right side of his face. Red Hood's head jerked at the impact and he fell backward. Dick leapt forward, pouncing on him and shoving him down with both hands on his chest.

"I asked you a question," he said pleasantly. He could see one of Red Hood's eyes now, and the side of his face. He was glaring at Dick through a second mask, a black domino. Of all the… wait. Dick frowned and grabbed the jagged edge of the helmet, pulling Red Hood's face up a little. He could feel Red Hood reaching for a weapon and frowned in concentration. The rest of the helmet burst, sending tiny red shards shooting across the rooftop. With Dick's hold on his helmet suddenly gone, Red Hood's head thumped back to the ground. Dick used the distraction to casually pluck away the weapons in easy reach of Red Hood's hands and toss them across the roof.

"Fuck," Red Hood swore, shaking his head slightly to clear it. He had a few tiny cuts on his face from the explosion, but nothing serious. Dick reached for the edge of the black domino and was met with a snarl as Red Hood tried to force his hand away, tried to twist out from under him. Dick put a hand on his throat, leaned forward, and hissed,

"I'll explode the mask too, and don't think I'll be as careful of the splinters."

Red Hood spat in his face, completely undeterred, and Dick blinked, then grinned. He was certain now what he'd find under the mask. He summoned coils of raw energy and forced Red Hood's arms down, bracketing them to the ground, then reached out and tore off the mask.

Jason flinched to the side, then thought better of it and glared straight at Dick, blue eyes sparking with rage. Dick flung his head back and laughed.

"Oh, Jason," he said. Then he leaned forward, a hand on either side of Jason's head, and brought their faces close. "You're supposed to be dead, little wing. I killed you myself."

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Nightwing came to in a cloudy, hazy sort of way which told him immediately that he'd been drugged after being punched. Great. He'd be more annoyed about that once the sedative wore off fully, but for now he was only distantly aware of his own body, let alone his surroundings.

Gradually, he realized the sounds hovering muzzily between his ears weren't in his head but were actually people talking not far away.

"…not what we agreed," said a woman's voice. It was almost familiar, but it had a strange quality that Nightwing couldn't quite place.

"You weren't there. I made a call, and I can handle him. He stays here." Bruce. And he was pretty sure he knew who they were talking about.

Nightwing took a deep breath to try to clear the last of the fumes from his mind. He was lying on his back on a medical gurney. Strapped to a medical gurney. There was a band across his chest and across his thighs, restraints on his wrists and ankles. From what he could see by straining forward slightly, they were marked with the same symbols the cuffs had been etched with.

The conversation grew nearer and Nightwing turned his head to see who Batman was talking to.

"His rehabilitation will go more smoothly at the Tower of Fate. Here, I cannot guarantee results." Doctor Fate, but not the Doctor Fate he knew.

"Zee?" he asked groggily. The outfit was Zatanna's, but in Doctor Fate's colors; her tailed coat and tights were gold, her corset, gloves, and bow tie blue. And of course, there was the helm.

Doctor Fate's gaze dropped briefly to Nightwing, as though he were a small animal who had made a sound, and drifted away again impassively. Then she looked back at him again, sharply, almost a double take.

"What have you done to him?" she asked Batman curiously. "That is not a chaos lord."

"What?" Batman snapped.

"I'm really not," Nightwing offered.

"Are you _certain_?" Batman demanded of Fate.

Doctor Fate crossed her arms and leveled an unblinking gaze on him. "I do not make mistakes. But if you would like verification on what he _is_ , I will require further study. At the Tower."

Batman ignored that and came to the side of the gurney, staring down at Nightwing, studying him. Nightwing didn't look away, though when Batman reached a hand toward his face it was an effort not to flinch. All Batman did was gently grasp the corner of Nightwing's mask, though, carefully peeling it away from skin. Nightwing closed his eyes as the last of it came away, then blinked up at Batman.

"Hi," he said. "I… have a feeling I'm a long way from home."

Batman didn't answer, staring down at the mask in his hand. Then, slowly, he pushed off his own cowl, as though he could better confirm what he was thinking if he could see it without the barrier of the mask's lenses. He reached out again, even more gently this time, and rubbed a thumb across Dick's cheekbone, rolling away the last of the adhesive. Dick couldn't help it; he squinched up that side of his face like a kid whose dad was rubbing dirt off with a licked thumb. Bruce exhaled sharply.

"How?" he asked.

"He is out of alignment with the energies of this plane," Doctor Fate offered.

"Alternate universe," Dick said. "I'm sorry Bruce, I'm not your Dick Grayson. And I don't know how I got here."

"This is easily discovered," Doctor Fate said. "The doings of your counterpart are never subtle. If there was a working of chaos recently, I will unearth it. It is likely that if you are here, he is there."

"What?" Dick demanded, jerking forward but brought up short by the restraints. Bruce put gentle pressure on his shoulder to push him back and began wordlessly undoing the straps. "This… your version of me is a chaos lord, and he's _in my place_? Zatanna, you can send me back, right?"

Doctor Fate considered him. "Most likely. If you have indeed switched places, this is a violation of order. Fate should intervene."

Bruce stepped back and Dick sat up, searching her eyes for any sign of his friend. "Zee… what happened? Why did you— in my world, it's Zatara who became Doctor Fate."

Fate didn't answer, but Bruce did. "Zatanna took the helm after Nightwing… changed. She intended to change him back." He glanced at Doctor Fate. "It's proved challenging."

"Changing him back has not proved anything yet. _Catching_ him, on the other hand," Fate said. Dick didn't think he'd ever heard Doctor Fate sound _annoyed_ before. "Yes, challenging is a good word for it."

"And if he's dimension hopping, it just got a lot harder," Batman added.

"Yes. I must seek out the traces of his magic." She turned her unblinking eyes to Dick. "I suggest you do not leave the cave. Your counterpart has, let us say, relationships that you do not want to get caught up in."

"Noted," Dick said, without actually promising anything.

"Hm," said Doctor Fate, well aware that he hadn't. She gestured and a portal opened right there in the Batcave, bleeding gold at the edges. Fate stepped through and it vanished.

"It's not as bad as it seems," Bruce said.

"What isn't?"

"Fate. Zatanna. They have… an arrangement. She's sharing her mind with Nobu on a level his previous hosts haven't. She performed some kind of séance and can communicate with him even without the helmet on, so he lets her take it off whenever she wants and she agrees to put it back on for Lords of Order business. It works out." Bruce turned and stalked back to the central area of the cave, heading for the computer. Dick slid off the gurney with only a slight wince and followed him.

"That's a relief. Hey, how bad _is_ this other version of me? I mean, chaos doesn't necessarily mean evil, right?"

Bruce paused, looking down at the mask he still held in one hand. "You were surprised to see the memorial," he said.

"Yeah, right before you clocked me," Dick said, rubbing his jaw where it was still quite sore. He was too used to Batman not answering questions to think much of the apparent subject change.

"Does that mean, where you're from… does Jason…"

"He's alive," Dick said, coming around in front of Bruce, whose eyes were still on his hands. "Hey," Dick said, pulling the mask out of his grip gently. "The Joker got him, but he came back and after a while you put the memorial away since Jason wouldn't want— if he ever came back to the cave— well, that's why I was surprised to see it, anyway."

"The Joker," Bruce said, narrowing his eyes. "Is that how it happened."

"It was different here?"

" _He_ killed him. Our version of you killed Jason."

The air got very thin. The far walls of the cave seemed to spiral away from Dick and he was suddenly dizzy. "What?" he heard himself say from a distance. "I— there's no way. I couldn't. I would _never_."

He wasn't sure he'd said any of those last things out loud, but the next thing he knew he was sitting on the ground with his head between his knees and Bruce's hand on the back of his neck. The position wasn't doing the bruising on his ribs any favors, but he felt sort of numb all over at the moment anyway.

"Breathe," Bruce was saying. "Not you. Him. You didn't do anything."

Dick took a few shallow breaths, then forced himself to take a deeper one and let it out slowly. He was still breathing more quickly than was healthy, but he thought he could control it now. He straightened. Bruce let him, but kept a hand on his back. "Not me," Dick agreed. "But it could have been. That's what alternate universes are, right? Someone makes a slightly different call, boom, new universe."

"That's one theory," Bruce allowed.

"Okay." Dick sighed, drawing it out and trying to center himself, as Batman had taught him. "Freak out later. There's a killer wearing my face walking around my home. Are we really going to sit here and wait for Doctor Fate to hand us a solution?"

Bruce's smile was grim as he stood and offered Dick a hand up. Dick accepted it and let Bruce pull him to his feet. "Not exactly your face," Bruce said. Dick glanced a question at him and Bruce pointed to Dick's mask. "He can't take it off. From what we can tell from brief encounters it appears to be fused to his face somehow. Doesn't seem to bother him but it will prevent him from using your civilian identity. His costume's different from yours too, so if your friends there are anything like what his friends were here, they'll know something's wrong. "

Dick nodded. They would. Especially coupled with the fact that, now that he thought about it, he must have vanished from Batgirl and Robin's sight as thoroughly as they'd vanished from his. And if his counterpart had shown up exactly where he'd been standing, that would be a pretty clear indicator, too. They could handle themselves.

"So Tim and Barbara are still Batgirl and Robin here, right?"

"They are. I wasn't going to take on another Robin," Bruce said, turning away and striding back to the computer. Dick knew that tactic. Whatever he was thinking about was easier if he wasn't looking at Dick, and he sounded a little defensive. "But Tim didn't give me much choice."

"That sounds about right," Dick said. "He came and found you after… after Jason?"

Bruce looked over his shoulder at Dick. "No," he said. "He found _him_. He went after Nightwing."

"He _what_?"

"Nightwing nearly killed him. Dropped him at my doorstep. I realized if I didn't take him in, get him some kind of training, at least enough to protect himself, I was as good as signing his death warrant."

"You don't have to defend yourself to me, B," Dick said, a little faintly. "But no wonder you were so mad when I asked about them earlier tonight."

"They're on the Watchtower. I had been planning on going after Nightwing soon and wanted them out of harm's way. When you showed up, I thought Nightwing had figured out my plans. But I confirmed their safety while you were unconscious." Not a hint of apology. Dick had to grin. Some things were a universal constant, it would seem. "How long they'll continue to follow orders and stay up there is uncertain, though, so we're not waiting for Fate." Bruce gestured at the screens in front of him, which showed a world map and something that looked a little like sonar. "I've made some enhancements since I started having to track a chaos lord. Let's see if we can do this more efficiently than she can."

 

In the end, they figured it out only minutes before Fate returned. Bruce had stolen some magic-tech hybrid machines from the Light and, with Zatara's help, rebuilt them from the ground up to create a network of magic-scanning satellites. They still needed to be tweaked and coaxed into delivering comprehensible results, but whatever Chaos Lord Dick Grayson had done, Fate was right: he wasn't subtle. There was a giant red gash across the map right over Roanoke Island, the significance of which was confirmed when Fate stepped through a portal right back into the cave and announced, "Roanoke."

"I can't believe you just let her portal in and out like that," Dick commented.

"Working on it," Bruce muttered.

"Sending this version home from there will be a simple matter," Fate said, ignoring them. "The walls between worlds are thinner there, something this world's Nightwing clearly knew. We will go there and simply slip you through the gaping cracks he left. I shall pull him back the same way."

"Simply, huh?" Dick asked, skeptical.

"Yes, it should be very simple. Provided he has not anchored himself."

 *

Jason was having a difficult day.

Not a bad day. Since the Pit, he'd had to reset the scale for "bad" and not a lot compared; certainly not something so minor as waking up tied firmly to a chair in such a way that proved that the whatever-it-was wearing Dick's face had his skill as well. His wrists were bound behind the back of the chair, the rope – or physical manifestation of dark matter or whatever it was that was holding him in place – threaded around his wrists, crossed over his chest, and looped around his neck so that, somehow, tugging at the part on his hands made the loop around his throat constrict. After that, having his ankles each bound to one of the front chair legs seemed almost an afterthought.

But for all that, it could definitely be worse. Not-Dick hadn't hurt him too badly, and as far as he could tell he was still wearing most of his gear, minus his guns. He just… had no idea where he was or what was happening.

Back on that rooftop, Not-Dick had pulled out Nightwing's old nickname for him and then claimed to have killed him in the same breath. This guy might not have been Dick, but he was also pretty clearly not the Joker, so Jason wasn't sure where he got off saying either of those things. Then Not-wing had… blurred? Doubles of him had appeared all over the roof in stuttering, bad-special-effects style, one after the other as though he was teleporting. But his weight had never left Jason's waist where he was pinning him to the roof.

When the visual stuttering had stopped, Not-Dick had looked down at him thoughtfully. "As you can see," he'd said. "I need an anchor. You'll do nicely." Then he'd gripped Jason's arms, took a deep breath, and did _something_ that made Jason's head feel like the helmet was exploding around it all over again. When he came to, he was here.

"Don't feel intimidated by all this," Not-Dick was saying. He was crouched a yard or two away using magic to burn markings on the floor in a vaguely circular pattern. It wasn't a pentagram – nothing so orderly as that – but it had a similar ritual feel, arabesques of unfathomable meaning spiraling outward from an empty central point. Jason's skin crawled. "I'm just getting it ready. I want to talk you through this first."

"Can we skip straight to the part where I tell you to go fuck yourself?"

Not-Dick grinned over his shoulder at him, finishing off the sigil with a flourish. "Don't get me wrong," he said. "I could do this on an unwilling subject. It's designed for inanimate objects, actually, but I think Klarion had the right idea with Teekl, you know?"

"You're working with Klarion?" Jason asked. It was an effort not to at least _try_ to work his wrists free, but he had no interest in garroting himself.

Not-Dick hissed through his teeth. "I am _not_. I'm working to get _away_ from him, and you're going to help me."

"Maybe if you asked nicely instead of all this bondage shit."

"I did try," not-Dick said. "The first time. A different you. It… didn't go well."

"The first… wait, is this time travel? Parallel universe stuff? Are you _actually_ D— Nightwing?" Jason asked, incredulous.

"I don't go by that name anymore. But yeah. Dick Grayson, former circus kid, former Robin, former human. Current chaos lord from another dimension in need of an anchor, and willing to give you just about anything you want in exchange," said Not— well actually, that was pretty clear proof that he _was_ Dick. Jason just really didn't want to think of him that way. Other-Dick was smiling at him in a winning fashion as though he expected Jason to name his price right then.

"Not _real_ interested in being tethered to a chaos lord for eternity," Jason said. "Don't you have other options?"

"Hm, you're sort of ideal," Other-Dick said, circling the chair. Jason couldn't turn his head to follow him, not without the bonds tugging uncomfortably. "If I take you back to my dimension, I can think of several people who would be _very_ reluctant to hurt you."

"Not you, though. Didn't you say you killed me?"

Other-Dick paused directly behind him. "It was an accident." Jason flinched when a black-gloved hand came to rest on his shoulder. "Do you believe me?"

"Not sure," Jason said, watching that hand without moving his head.

"Would you believe the Dick from this universe?"

"He's not the one who killed _me_ ," Jason pointed out. Other-Dick's hand vanished and he swung around the chair to kneel in front of Jason, hands on Jason's knees and attention suddenly sharp.

"Does that mean someone else did, here? Jason, did you die?"

He was entirely too interested for Jason's taste. "It's not exactly something I like talking about," he bit out.

Other-Dick just smiled that slow smile again and rested his chin on one of Jason's knees, draping his arm across his thigh. Jason swallowed hard. Even with the white of the mask's lenses blocking Dick's eyes, it was a pretty devastating look. "Oh, Jason. I don't think you understand how patient I'm being. At any moment, Klarion is going to realize that I've run away. Do you know that he's in tune with practically every version of himself across the multiverse?" Jason hoped he wasn't expected to answer that because not only did he not know that little fact, he didn't _care_. Luckily, Other-Dick went on. "He's chaotic. All of him is, I mean. Or are? I swear the worst part of this whole chaos thing is the irregular grammar."

" _Really_?" Jason interrupted. Other-Dick ignored him.

"Anyway, apparently almost every other version of _me_ is logic-driven. Emotional maybe, or mischievous, sometimes evil, whatever that means, but ultimately… Batman's protégé. I'm the outlier. Other dimensions resist me, and I'm—" His mouth twisted. "Volatile. As in, could explode the whole universe if I poke at my power the wrong way. Klarion knows it, knows I won't go all out against him because… well, I don't _want_ to explode the universe. But he keeps me around like a nuke on a leash. Most days he has more control over my power than I do." Other-Dick's tone was bitter, but then he brightened. "So, anchor." He poked the hard muscle in Jason's thigh. "Stability. No more nuke."

"How does that even work?" Jason couldn't help asking. "I'm not even from the same dimension as you. How could I anchor you?"

Dick grinned and bounced to his feet. "I know, right? It's actually really cool, the anchor bond acts as kind of an overflow valve. The ritual gives the anchor a higher, I guess, spiritual viscosity? You're like a tuning fork so if we— _ah_!" Other-Dick cut himself off, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead. Jason's eyes darted around the warehouse looking for a threat, then darted around for a way to take advantage of Other-Dick's sudden distraction. Finding neither, he settled for snark.

"If you've got a headache, babe, we can do this some other night."

Other-Dick's laugh was pained. "I am really, _really_ sorry I killed you," he said between clenched teeth. Then he straightened. "Whoever said magic was just sufficiently advanced science had never met chaos magic. It _hates_ being explained."

"Then hooking up with you was a stupid choice. You love explaining shit."

Other-Dick nodded seriously. "Sometimes the stupid choice is the only one you've got."

"What—"

"Nope. Not talking about it. Unless you want to become my anchor, then I'll happily tell you everything. Instead…" Other-Dick hopped into Jason's lap, knees parting around his torso. He took Jason's face in his hands, thumbs coming to rest just beneath his eyes. Jason hissed and jerked his head backward, then choked slightly as the rope went tight. "Tell me how you died."

"Asphyxiation," Jason coughed out. "About to be."

Other-Dick frowned and the pressure at Jason's throat lessened.

"Thanks," Jason said. "Now fuck off."

"I could pull it from your mind," Dick mused, sweeping one thumb slowly up Jason's cheekbone to his temple. "But that has the side effect of forcing you to relive it."

"The Joker, a crowbar, an explosion," Jason spat.

Other-Dick cocked his head. "What was that?"

"Did I stutter?"

"No, your eyes. They just flashed green."

"None of your damn business."

Dick shrugged. "All right. So, the Joker killed you in this universe. Did you kill him back?"

Jason gritted his teeth.

"I see," Dick said. His smile was all predator. "Would you like me to kill him for you?"

"Hell no. If anyone's gonna kill that asshole, it's gonna be me."

"But you haven't. No, wait, I know," Dick said, putting his hand over Jason's mouth. "Batman. He wouldn't like that at all." Jason tried to bite Other-Dick's hand, but he pulled it away sharply, laughing. "I love being right. But look, if you're going to go dimension-hopping with me, who cares what one Batman thinks? This dimension's treated you about as shittily as mine treated me. Be my anchor, we'll go kill the Joker together – or I'll just watch, whatever floats your boat – and then skip town. Hell, we can travel across the multiverse and kill him as many times as you want, I certainly don't have plans."

"This isn't a call I'm going to make tied to a chair at your mercy," Jason said, though that was mostly to cover his hesitation because… damn if that wasn't a little tempting. _Wrong_ , of course, and there was no way he was going to bind himself to someone who'd killed him in another life, but the idea of skipping across universes at will, maybe even to one where he wasn't a victim…

"It's cute that you think you wouldn't be at my mercy if you weren't tied up," Other-Dick said, winding his arms around Jason's neck and loosely clasping his hands behind it. "You're tied up so I don't have to hurt you to get you to sit still long enough to listen to me."

"Uh huh," Jason said. "Tell me, is this how Klarion got you to agree to the whole chaos minion thing? Tied you down and told you it was the only way out?"

Other-Dick hissed at him, the mask on his face _twisting_ , the points of it sharpening until it was its own snarl to match the teeth he'd bared. A hand gripped the back of Jason's neck, and Jason could feel the pinpricks of claws.

"Don't you dare compare what I'm doing to what he did to me. You don't know anything about it."

"Whatever it was, _my_ Nightwing managed to come through it without sacrificing his humanity," Jason said dismissively, as though he couldn't feel those talons lengthening.

Other-Dick went very, very still.

"All right, then," he said quietly. The claws retracted and he slid off of Jason's lap. "I'm going to take this as a no. The only question is, do I go ahead and try it anyway, or go find Barbara and see if I can talk her around?"

"If you think that talk's gonna go any better than this one you really have lost your mind," Jason scoffed.

"Good point. I've taken too long here anyway." Other-Dick's hand shot out and he grabbed the front of Jason's jacket. He yanked him forward and the bonds dissipated instantly. Jason gasped as feeling rushed back into his hands, but Dick moved too quickly for him to take advantage of his freedom. He swung around and hurled Jason to the floor, right in the center of the sigil he'd drawn, then casually flicked a wrist to send a bracket of magic flying at him. It hit Jason's throat right after Jason hit the ground, collaring him to the concrete. Jason tugged at it, arching his back and digging in his heels to try to pry it off, but of course it was _magic_. It wasn't going anywhere.

"This won't hurt if you don't struggle," Other-Dick said. "But since I know you're going to struggle, don't worry: No matter how much it hurts, I'm pretty sure you won't die."

"Fine. Get it fucking over with so I can _kill you_."

"Also pretty sure if you kill me after we're tethered you die too."

" _Worth it_."

Other-Dick grinned and raised a hand – to do what, Jason would never know, because at that moment a batarang whizzed out of the dark shadows of the warehouse and hit Other-Dick directly on the back of the head. He whirled, snarling, and Batgirl dropped from the rafters, her boots colliding with his chest and driving him to the ground.

They tangled, Other-Dick apparently too surprised to use magic and falling back instinctively on his physical training. Jason, flat on his back and pinned by the neck, couldn't really see what was happening. But then Robin was leaning over him, a gloved hand sliding over the magic holding him down.

"Don't draw his attention," Robin murmured.

"No shit," Jason returned. "Got something that can break chaos magic?"

"Chaos?" Robin ran through his mental catalog of devices he was carrying. "No. Looks like you're stuck 'til we knock out the caster," he said, getting to his feet to go help Batgirl.

"Hey wait," Jason said. He grabbed Robin's ankle before he could go. "Damage the symbols. Erase it, or cover it or something."

Robin took in the signs on the ground and nodded once. In one smooth action he pulled out a flare, knelt, cracked it, and swept it around in a wide swath as it sparked and ignited – and left a stripe of blackened concrete in its wake. Jason stifled a yelp.

"What happened to not drawing his attention?" he hissed

"New plan," Robin said, straightening.

Other-Dick had, indeed, noticed them, and had apparently also remembered that he was a chaos lord, because he flung Batgirl off of him with a burst of magic. Robin dashed past her before she hit the ground, staff extending and whistling through the air as he swept it toward Other-Dick's legs. Dick just grinned and hopped over it, hovering so that Robin's follow up was completely thrown off; he hadn't been anticipating a flying opponent and Dick used the opportunity to land on his shoulders and kick off, hard, driving himself through the air toward Batgirl.

Batgirl had landed easily for being flung through the air on a wave of force, and was waiting for him in a crouch. "Didn't anyone tell you Nightwing can't fly?" she asked, spinning out of the way as he flew past her. "You're a pretty terrible copy."

"Alternate universe!" Jason called from the ground. Other-Dick had landed just a few feet away, between him and Batgirl, and Jason's finger was itching for a trigger. "It's Nightwing with chaos magic!"

"Well that seems unfair," Batgirl muttered, squaring off to fight him as Robin hurried to her side.

"You have no idea," Dick said. He began gathering power in his hand, raw chaos. Jason thought he saw little waves of distortion collecting around him, like heat rising off a road in the summer, though he had a feeling this was a lot less harmless. Robin and Batgirl braced themselves, but then Dick gasped and fell to a knee, hand to his head. " _Fuck_."

Robin and Batgirl didn't waste any time rushing him. Dick raised an arm to block a blow from Robin's staff, then twisted his wrist to grip it and used it as a lever to fling Robin into Batgirl, who sort of awkwardly caught him but fell backward doing so. Dick rose to his feet and casually tossed a knife of magic after them. It struck Robin high on the back, near his shoulder blade, sinking in through both cape and armor. Robin let out a shout of pain that was echoed by one of concern from Batgirl. Dick stalked closer to them, taking his time as Batgirl disentangled herself from Robin and placed herself between him and Dick. Robin was keeping his feet, but he'd transferred his staff to his left hand and Dick knew it was mainly for show; his right arm would be weak and the staff would be less than half as effective wielded one-handed.

Dick twisted his wrist and the shard of magic stuck in Robin's back responded, sending him to his knees with a bitten-off cry.

"Leave him alone, you asshole!" Jason shouted, redoubling his efforts to get free.

"Sure," Dick said easily, even as Batgirl nearly landed a right hook on his face. He dodged, ducked, and got kicked solidly in the side for his troubles. "Just gonna pick up a spare since she was nice enough to come to me."

"In your dreams, Fakewing," Batgirl scoffed.

Someone laughed at that. But it wasn't Jason, or Robin, or Other-Dick.

"Fakewing. I like it. Is that what this is?" Klarion asked, popping into existence next to Other-Dick and looking him over. "I think I want one."

 


	3. Chapter 3

Doctor Fate transported both Nightwing and Batman to Roanoke, which was convenient but a little disorienting. The portal made Nightwing's ears pop and his bones vibrate at a weird frequency, but it went away as soon as they were through. He'd re-applied the mask before they left since he didn't know what he'd be dropping into when he made it back to his own dimension.

They arrived in a clearing that appeared completely innocuous to Nightwing, but Doctor Fate looked intently at a few of the trees and the ground, and Nightwing could tell from the way the corners of her eyes crinkled that Zatanna was wrinkling her nose in annoyance under the helm.

"The amount of residual energy here is… egregious," Fate said. She closed her eyes and lifted a few inches off the ground, rotating slowly as she hovered.

"We talking world's-largest-ball-of-yarn egregious or now-we-need-a-new-plan egregious?" Nightwing asked. Fate didn't answer. Nightwing glanced at Batman, eyebrows raised, but Batman's eyes were on a small device in his hand, scanning the clearing on his own. Of course. Nightwing didn't have any chaos-detecting capabilities so he leaned against a tree and crossed his arms, waiting.

Eventually Fate came to a stop and raised one hand, palm out, like a mime defining a wall. "Here. I will need to attune you to the barrier; then you will slide through easily, re-aligning with your home dimension." Fate stretched out her other hand and beckoned Nightwing forward.

"Okay," Nightwing said, stepping within arm's reach while Batman watched like a hawk. "Does it matter that I don't know what any of that means?"

Fate cocked her head. "My host informed me that you enjoy knowing what is going to happen before it happens."

Nightwing breathed out a laugh. "She's not wrong. So what do I do?"

"Hold still." Fate put her hand on Nightwing's face, the heel of it resting right on the bridge of his nose so her palm was covering his forehead.

"Awkward," Nightwing said.

"And stop talking," Fate added. Nightwing opened his mouth.

"Nightwing," Batman said. It was exactly the same tone of voice that Nightwing's Batman had used when he was a kid getting carried away with word games when Batman was trying to wring answers out of evidence; not exactly a warning, not exactly a plea, but a little of both. Nightwing's mouth snapped shut.

Fate's eyes began to glow again and Nightwing felt a low hum start up in his molars and slowly spread to his bones just as it had when Fate had pulled him through the portal to get here. It was distracting, to say the least, and so Nightwing nearly missed Batman's warning shout. He jerked, wanting to pull away from Fate and turn his head to look to Batman, but also thinking that might be a terrible idea since both Fate's hands were glowing now, too.

But he couldn't miss the thin arms wrapping around his shoulders from behind, or the pale, pointed chin that came to rest on his left shoulder with a grin.

"Don't worry, pet, I'll save you," Klarion said, and gave a sharp tug backward, pulling Nightwing away from Fate. There was a _snap_ and a blinding flash of light and the next thing Nightwing could see, Fate had collapsed, unconscious. Batman was across the clearing wrestling with Teekl in her saber-toothed form. Teekl had gotten him to the ground and was trying to close teeth around his throat, but Batman was holding her off, his iron-reinforced gauntlets withstanding her fangs as he held her mouth open – barely.

Klarion crowed with laughter. His arms were still wrapped around Nightwing from behind; he was hovering to make up the height difference. His grip was high enough on Nightwing's arms, though, that it was no problem for Nightwing to grab his escrima from their leg holster and jab one backward into Klarion's face.

Klarion jerked away more from surprise than because Nightwing could actually hurt him, but that was all he needed. As soon as Klarion was off him, he was sprinting across the clearing, leaping into a handspring, aiming both feet at Teekl's side and kicking her off of Batman. He rolled to his feet, escrima sparking, and faced off against Teekl, who recovered just as quickly.

"What's this?" Klarion demanded. "Did you and Batman make up while I wasn't looking?"

Nightwing refused to be distracted. He and Teekl were slowly circling each other, which Nightwing was happy to continue. It would give Batman, who had vanished from the ground the moment Nightwing had connected with Teekl, a chance to do whatever he was planning on doing and it kept Teekl at a distance – because if she got any closer Nightwing knew he was going to start sneezing. His nose was already itching.

"Ugh, whatever, doesn't matter, I'll just grab this unattended Helm of Fate and we can be on our way," Klarion said.

"What? No!" Nightwing broke from Teekl at that, running for Zatanna and knowing both that Klarion was going to beat him to her and that he could expect to feel Teekl's claws in his back at any moment. But Klarion stopped mid-stride, staring behind Nightwing in horror.

"Oh no you don't!" he cried. "Teekl, come!" Klarion held his arms open and Teekl in her small cat form suddenly darted past Nightwing to leap into them. Nightwing glanced behind him and saw Batman holding something that looked very like the manacles he'd slapped on Nightwing hours ago on the Gotham rooftops, but bigger. Like a collar for a saber-toothed demon cat. Nightwing skidded to a halt. Klarion and Teekl both were now between him and Zatanna, but Klarion seemed to have forgotten about her for the moment.

"You've been raiding the Tower of Fate," Klarion hissed.

In response, Batman whipped a batarang at Klarion. It whistled right past Nightwing's ear. Klarion batted it away with one hand, the other arm still supporting Teekl, but his skin began to smoke where the batarang had connected.

"Oh I don't like this at all," Klarion said. He took a step back toward Zatanna and another batarang nearly took his foot off. Klarion scowled. "I get the message. Come on, Witchwing, we're out of here."

" _Excuse me_?" Nightwing said. "I don't think so."

"I don't have time for this right now," Klarion muttered. He vanished and reappeared directly in front of Nightwing. Nightwing danced backward – he could hear Batman closing the distance between them – but not fast enough. Klarion's fingers closed on Nightwing's wrist and something in the pit of his stomach twisted, or maybe that was the rest of the world, because the last thing he saw was Batman behind him reaching out a hand and _just_ missing, closing on air as Klarion dragged Nightwing out of existence.

 

Wherever they reappeared, Nightwing did not do so gracefully. Klarion let go of his wrist almost before they had fully materialized, so Nightwing took the opportunity to fall over (oh, carpeting, very nice) and sneeze three times in rapid succession. Klarion gave him a mildly alarmed look.

"You… chaos lords don't _sneeze_ ," he protested. "I know you're weird, but this is just… _really_ weird!"

" _Uggggh_ ," Nightwing half growled, half groaned. He got to his feet and stalked toward Klarion, jabbing an escrima stick at his chest for emphasis. "I'm not a chaos lord, I'm not your Nightwing, I'm not even _from_ here, so _put me back_!"

Klarion clutched Teekl protectively to his chest, backing away wide-eyed under Nightwing's advance. Then Nightwing sneezed again and Teekl's fur went spiky. She leapt out of Klarion's arms and took refuge on top of an armoire.

Armoire? Nightwing looked around quickly, cataloging his surroundings in a moment. They were in some kind of workshop, albeit a kind of luxurious one. A soft, deep red carpet covered the floor; there was a large, sturdy wooden table etched with symbols along one wall; shelves filled with strangely shaped and colored bottles, boxes, and caskets lined the other wall; closed storage (like the armoire and a chest with a chain and padlock on it) sat against the wall behind Klarion; and the fourth wall was simply blank stone. An iron chandelier filled with wax candles that burned with an eerie steadiness and without dripping hung from a high ceiling. There were no doors or windows.

Klarion was grinning now. "Hang on. Did you actually do it? Did you manage to run away from me?" He looked delighted. Nightwing growled and flicked on the current on his sticks. Klarion rolled his eyes. "Put those away before I turn them into a couple of rattlesnakes."

Nightwing threw one of the sticks at Teekl, who dodged, hissing. Nightwing was already moving to intercept her, but Klarion flicked his fingers and fibers of the carpet elongated and wrapped themselves around Nightwing's ankles. He crashed forward with a grunt. The carpet held fast, leaving Nightwing prone. He shoved himself to his elbows, still gripping one escrima stick, as Klarion looked down on him, arms crossed.

"Teekl, you should go," Klarion said. "Our guest has no manners." Teekl twitched her tail and leapt into the air, vanishing at the height of her arc. "We're in one of my pocket dimensions; I don't need an anchor here. So what will you do now that you can't attack an innocent kitty?"

Nightwing glared up at Klarion, then grudgingly holstered the remaining stick. It wouldn't be any use against Klarion anyway. "Happy?"

"Very," Klarion said, showing his teeth. The carpet fibers retracted to their normal length and Nightwing twisted to his feet, putting as much space between him and Klarion as he could in the small room. "You're really lucky I took us here," Klarion said. "A lot of my pockets don't have physics."

"Look," Nightwing said. "I'm not the one you're after. I don't even belong in this dimension. It's not worth the fight you'll pick with Batman and Doctor Fate to keep me here."

"Now there's an uninformed opinion," Klarion said. He put a hand on his chin and moved closer to Nightwing, peering closely at him. Nightwing resisted the urge to press himself against the wall. "You have no idea how powerful my you is."

"If he's anything like me, I'm guessing he'd object to being called yours," Nightwing said.

"Oh he _does_." Klarion seemed delighted. "Not much he can do about it, for all that power. See, he's unstable. Because Nightwing becoming a Lord of Chaos? That's kind of a one-in-a-million turn of events. He's out of tune with almost every other version of himself across the multiverse." Klarion circled Nightwing, and when he found Nightwing was too close to the wall for him to make a complete circuit, he had the piece of carpet Nightwing was standing on lift up and scoot him forward a foot or two.

"Hey!" Nightwing turned with Klarion, refusing to let him at his back. Klarion didn't seem to mind. He reached out a finger to poke at Nighwing's ribs and Nightwing batted it aside. "Does that mean you're an evil asshole in every universe?"

"See, you get it," Klarion said. "I mean, the evil part is relative. You should see the versions of _you_ that took a walk on the dark side. They're something else. Not chaotic, but definitely _something_."

Nightwing opened his mouth to protest, but came up empty. _Jason_. He swallowed hard instead.

Klarion seemed to have finished his examination because he stopped pacing and nodded to himself. "Yes, you can stay."

"I don't _want_ to stay!"

"That, I don't need your permission for," Klarion said with a grin. "I'm not sure how I'm going to entice you to the wonders of chaos magic – last time it took me, Savage, _and_ Ra's, plus a little help from Deathstroke for the grunt work – but we'll get there."

"No, we won't," Nightwing said firmly. "I've already seen the fallout from me going chaotic. Not happening, and no matter what you did to him I bet the other me would never have done it either if he'd known what he would turn into."

Klarion shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Why don't you think about it. I need to go talk to myself."

"No, don't— damn it." Nightwing muttered as Klarion vanished with a _pop_. Being abandoned in a windowless, doorless pocket dimension felt alarmingly familiar, but at least this one had _things_ in it. Resources, possibly. He eyed the shelves, wondering how much he dared poke at the contents of those containers and boxes and cupboards. With a chaotic version of himself on the loose, a witch boy looking to make more, and exactly zero other options, he decided he dared quite a lot. Time to rummage through Klarion's medicine cabinet and see what he could use.

 *

Dick lashed out a hand, an unfocused burst of magic swarming out toward Klarion as Dick stumbled away from him. Klarion looked at it curiously, then clapped his hands with glee. "Oh, it's a little baby chaos lord! This is the most adorable thing I've ever seen," he enthused. On his shoulder, Teekl purred her agreement. Klarion zipped over to the retreating Dick and hovered around him, flitting about to examine him from all sides. Dick backflipped away from the scrutiny and tried another lash of magic, but instead of a weapon appearing, the entire floor of the warehouse suddenly turned pink and slightly garlic-scented. 

"And you're dimension-hopping already!" Klarion sounded like a parent whose child has just learned to stand on his own. "Look at you, all out of tune with physics and wreaking havoc." 

"Back off, Klarion, I— nngh." Dick pressed a hand to his head, clearly feeling the physics.

Across the room, the band of energy holding Jason to the floor fizzled and died and Jason scrambled away from the marred symbols toward Batgirl and Robin. Batgirl had one of Robin's arms pulled across her shoulders, supporting him as he got to his feet.

"I can walk, it's just my shoulder," Robin protested.

"Not fast enough, kid," Jason said.

"I'm not a— _fuck_ ," Robin swore as Jason plucked him from Batgirl's grip and tossed him over his shoulder. "I'm injured, you ass."

"Whatever, let's get out of here before they notice we're leaving." Jason reached for his grapple, but found it missing. Right. Not-wing had divested him of all his equipment. Batgirl rolled her eyes and slid an arm around Jason's waist.

"Hang on," she said. "Tight, because there's a bit of a weight difference here."

Jason looped the arm that wasn't supporting Robin around Batgirl and held on as she fired the line up to the catwalks, where they presumably had an exit. Batgirl gave a little grunt of effort as she took Jason and Robin's weight, but they made it to the catwalk right by an open skylight.

"Great," Jason said, dumping Robin off his shoulder. "Let's book."

"What about…" Robin looked over the edge of the catwalk back to the floor, where a now-giant Teekl had pinned Other-Dick while Klarion crouched near him, apparently gloating or possibly just chatting about the weather.

"Leave 'em. That's not Nightwing, and we do not want to be here when two chaos things start duking it out," Jason advised.

"We should make sure there are no civilians nearby. Then… it's probably time to call in Batman," Batgirl said, slipping out the window and offering Robin a hand.

"Fuck Batman, get me someone with quantum physics powers," Jason said, following them out to the roof. "That fake Nightwing is from another dimension. We need to find out what happened to ours. Unless you guys can find him the same way you found me?"

Batgirl shook her head. "We tracked you here following a radiation signature similar to traces we picked up on the roof where Nightwing vanished. We were hoping to find him here, but…"

"Smart money's on him being in another dimension," Robin finished. He was holding his right arm stiffly. Jason frowned.

"How badly are you bleeding right now?" He lifted Robin's cape, and it was telling enough that Robin didn't simply move out of the way to prevent him. The uniform hid blood well, but it couldn't hide a four-inch gash. At least the bleeding had slowed; automatic compression from the armor helped with that, but still. It wasn't pretty. "Shit. That's deep. You need treatment, idiot."

"He's right," Batgirl said. Robin gave her a betrayed look and she crossed her arms. "Get to the cave. Contact Batman on your way, fill him in. Red Hood and I will handle any civilians in the area, but you can get started on a more sophisticated scan, work the interdimensional theory – _after_ Alfred gets a look at that shoulder."

Robin looked mutinous and Jason smirked. "You heard her, Replacement. Get gone."

"On second thought," Batgirl said. "Red Hood, go with him. I can handle the civilians and who knows what you'll run into between here and the cave."

"Who died and made you the boss?" Jason asked at the same time as Robin said, "I don't need a baby sitter!"

"I don't have time to argue with your egos!" Batgirl snapped. "Whatever is happening in there could explode at any minute. I'm going to get bystanders out of the way. Hood, I don't technically have any authority over you so do what you want, but Robin, you are going back to the Batcave _now_."

Robin's mouth snapped shut and he turned without another word, heading for the fire escapes and ground level where Jason assumed he had transport. Hopefully it was something he could drive one-armed…

Batgirl watched Robin go, then looked to Jason, who had already made up his mind but was definitely waiting until Batgirl left so it wouldn't look like he was following her orders. He crossed his arms, meeting her stare.

"Come on, Hood. I'll loan you my copy of _The_ _Woman in White_."

Jason snorted. "I have a library card, you know."

"This is the Norton critical edition, _plus_ it has my annotations from my Victorian lit class."

It was patently ridiculous to be bribing him with used books, and they both knew it. But Jason recognized an olive branch when he saw one. The fact that he usually chose to set them on fire was beside the point.

"Well, when you put it like that," he said, with a massive roll of his eyes that was practically a whole-body shrug. "Relax, Bat Junior. I'll look out for the replacement." Batgirl grinned and tossed him a grapple. He gave her a mocking salute and turned, following Robin's route but sticking to the rooftops.

Whatever Robin had driven here was long gone, but there were only so many safe routes for an injured bird to take back to the nest. Jason picked him up soon enough and trailed him, making sure to swing out over Robin's path every once in a while just because he knew it would annoy him. He knew from what he'd seen of the wound that driving the motorcycle must have been causing him a great deal of pain, but the kid didn't show it at all. Not until he was nearly at the city limits and took a turn just a little too tightly.

Jason had been about to call him safe – it wasn't like there were ravening wolves between the edges of Gotham and the nearest cave entrance, and Jason would be out of buildings to rappel between soon – when Robin's knee grazed the road just enough to send the bike into a skid that ended with Robin sprawled out and the bike scraping across asphalt.

Jason hit the road with a knee-jarring thud and sprinted over. It wasn't a bad fall as far as people like them were concerned; they practiced things like this for exactly such an occasion, and they were on a pretty deserted road so it wasn't like threats were looming in the shadows. But it was a stupid mistake, which meant Robin was hurting bad, and a minor wipeout with a prior injury could be much more serious if it meant you didn't catch yourself properly.

Robin was already shoving himself up when Jason got there.

"I'm fine," he bit out.

"Yeah? You normally eat asphalt on nothing turns?"

"Extenuating circumstances." Robin's bravado was ruined by his right arm refusing to take his weight and folding suddenly. Robin hissed in pain but got to his feet anyway, remembering not to use his right arm this time. He walked over to the bike and started pulling it up one-handed, clearly struggling. Jason went to the other side of it and helped prop it up.

"Hey. Dickface ever tell you about the time I had to drive him back to the cave because he – really stupidly – got a face full of fear gas?"

Robin looked at him warily. "No," he said.

"Yeah, well, at least he was smart enough to admit he needed the help. And he was technically less injured than you at the time." Jason pulled the bike away from Robin easily and threw a leg over the seat. "Get on."

Robin didn't move. Jason growled, "Look, who do you think Bats is gonna blame if you don't make it back to the cave in one piece? Especially after Batgirl tells him I was following you?"

Robin hesitated a moment longer, then nodded once and got on behind Jason, wrapping his left arm firmly around him. The right apparently hurt too much to even reach that far; Robin kept it tucked between them against his stomach. Jason hoped that grip was enough as he brought the bike back to life and sped off toward the cave.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Back in the warehouse district Batgirl had cleared out the few nearby civilians, but she needn't have worried. The most violent thing happening for miles around was the color of the warehouse floor. Teekl had her front paws on Dick's shoulders, holding him down easily since the amount of power he would need to move her might well trigger a universal meltdown, or a migraine, or both.

"How were you more competent as a human than as a magical being tapped into the primal forces of the universe?" Klarion asked. He was crouched by Dick's head, looking at him curiously. Teekl gave Dick a sniff and growled her displeasure.

"Do you _want_ me to trigger the collapse of reality?" Dick asked waspishly.

Klarion shrugged. "I can always hop to another one. Say, it looks like I interrupted an anchor ritual. Why'd you come all the way to another universe just to get an anchor?"

"To get away from _you_ ," Dick seethed. He tried to grab hold of his power, to phase away out from under Teekl's pin, but Teekl grumbled and dug her claws into his shoulders. Dick winced; not many things could physically harm a chaos lord, but Teekl was one of those things.

"That's a shame. Is that where you sent my version of you? Teekl likes him better, but I'm thinking this might not be a bad exchange. Maybe the other one will come back all chaos-y too!"

Dick took a deep breath and _shifted_. Three pale green peonies bloomed between Teekl's toes, which hadn't been his intention, but he also slid right out from under her like he was stealing second base, only two of her claws managing to catch the meat of his shoulder. He kept going anyway, let the skin tear. It was just pain, and he knew he would heal if he could just get away.

Teekl snarled, tail thrashing, as Dick lurched to his feet — and then lurched to a stop, suddenly frozen.

"Hang on," Klarion said from behind him, holding up a hand. "I gotta take this. Yes? Uh huh. Well if you didn't want him to run away you should have taken better care of him."

Dick felt a cold shiver climb down his spine. Klarion paced around him, arms crossed, apparently talking to thin air. He couldn't see Teekl, and he couldn't move his head to find her.

"Of course it's a good idea, but I don't see why you need _both_ of them. Oh. Oh, well, that's true, I am a bit attached to mine. All right, deal." Klarion came to a halt in front of Dick, eyed him for a moment, then shrugged and gave him a hard, two-handed shove. Abruptly unfrozen, Dick stumbled backward and suddenly sensed the gaping tear in reality behind him. He fell through, feeling like his skin had been carbonated and his breath was being pulled out through his eyes.

It lasted only a moment. Then Dick felt reality _click_ back into place, felt himself align with a feeling like he'd been looking at the universe through a slightly mis-calibrated telescope and had finally found the right focal length.

Someone was hugging him.

No, someone was _holding_ him. His back was against their chest, and thin arms were crossed over his broken blue bird while his legs were sprawled out in front of him on a stone floor. Dick jerked forward and to his surprise, Klarion let him go. He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the throb of the clawmarks in his shoulder, while Klarion stayed sitting on the floor where he'd caught him.

"Hmph. Next time I'll let you crack your skull open on the ground. Just because you can survive it now doesn't mean it's pleasant," Klarion sniffed. Teekl hopped into his lap and curled up there. Klarion scratched her ears absently.

They were on Earth. His Earth. Dick could tell Teekl was acting in her capacity as anchor with barely a glance. They were in a cave of some kind; the details didn't really matter since he could easily teleport himself to anywhere on the planet now, but he noted them out of habit. He just had to slow Klarion down, and that meant—

"I even brought you a present," Klarion said. "So don't even think about attacking sweet Teekl."

"I don't want anything from you," Dick said.

"Oh, well, all right then," Klarion said with a shrug. "Guess I'll just figure out something else to do with him."

"Him?" Dick asked sharply.

Klarion nodded meaningfully toward the space behind Dick and Dick cautiously turned to see what he meant. Lying curled on his side near the wall of the cave, hands bound behind his back and ankles tied together, was Nightwing. Himself. Dick knew it the way he knew how to breathe. It was pitch dark in the cave – a fact that didn't matter to Klarion or Dick – but Nightwing was blindfolded anyway and lying utterly still, to all appearances unconscious. Dick knew better.

"He shouldn't be here," Dick said. "He should have been repelled back into his own dimension."

"That's only when you go crashing through the walls like a bulldozer," Klarion said with a roll of his eyes. "My other self put you here with a nice, quiet dimensional doorway. There wasn't enough force to send this one flying."

"And you're… giving him to me. Why?" Dick demanded.

Klarion unfolded himself from the ground, Teekl hopping to his shoulders where she kept her balance impeccably despite the small surface area. "A reward. Because you surprised me." Klarion was grinning. "You've been so boring. You hardly touch your power anymore. I can't tell if you're scared of it, or maybe you like being ordered around. So I really wasn't expecting you to go and scramble your molecules with some absurd plan to make yourself _safe_. Definitely amusing. I want more. So… take him. Make a start on consolidating your power. I'd like it if you were a little less pathetic."

"Consolidating?" Dick echoed. "You want me to turn him into what I am. So I won't be the only one." His eyes narrowed. "That's pretty stupid. Like putting a weapon in my hands."

"Well you clearly need one," Klarion huffed. "Look, I left _that_ you alone in my workshop for less than an hour and when I came back he had opened every single box, including the one with the negative space in it, and not only had he survived but when I found him he was holding the freaking Penknife of Sovereignty. Luckily he had no idea what it does, but there were energy knots _everywhere_." Klarion glared at Nightwing's still form and Dick resisted the urge to step between them. "I seriously considered swapping you two out, shiny new toy for the broken one," Klarion went on. "But I still think you have potential, what with your bat-feud and absurd power levels. Plus Nabu's way more interesting now, so I do owe you for that."

Klarion shrugged and reached up to scritch Teekl under her chin. Then both of them pinned their gazes on him in eerie synchronicity, Klarion's eyes flaring red to match Teekl's. "Don't disappoint me, though. I'm getting tired of our game."

Then they both vanished without even a whisper of displaced air. Dick stared for a moment or two, then looked back to where Nightwing was still feigning unconsciousness. This had to be some kind of trap.

He let his awareness spread out into the cave. It was a smallish cavern, maybe fifteen paces wall to wall at its widest, allowing for movement around a scattering of stalagmites. The roof soared at least twenty feet above. Several openings led off into a warren of tunnels, but Dick could tell the exit wasn't far, just around the curve of the northernmost tunnel. Why Klarion had chosen this spot, Dick had no idea, though he might not have had much choice. Rifts between dimensions couldn't be opened just anywhere.

He turned to the other version of himself and crossed his arms, considering.

 

Klarion's reaction to Nightwing trashing the extra-dimensional workshop had been, in Nightwing's opinion, a little out of proportion. What had he been _expecting_ , leaving a Bat-trained hero alone like that? Then again, in this universe he'd become a chaos lord and killed Jason so, who knew, really.

But Klarion had come back, taken one look around – just enough time for Nightwing to act like he'd been holding that little penknife in order to attack – and whipped the blade out of Nightwing's hand. Literally. He'd created a lash from thin air, snapped it at Nightwing's wrist so that it curled around in a stripe of burning pain more than enough to make him drop the knife, and gave a sharp tug. Nightwing tried to pull back, but in that place… he didn't stand a chance. Before long, Klarion had him face down on the carpet and was tying him up, even going so far as to put a blindfold over his mask because apparently Nightwing had convinced him that he was just a little too capable.

"I get the feeling you're annoyed with me," Nightwing had quipped as Klarion had tugged the bonds tighter. He was going to lose feeling in his hands before too long.

"This is going to take forever to sort out," Klarion said. "I hate cleaning. I hate _organizing_."

"See, this is why you and the Lords of Order should be friends, I bet they love— hey!" Nightwing found himself suddenly levitating. It was extra disorienting since he couldn't see. He tested whatever was circling his wrists and ankles, but it had no give. It didn't feel like metal, either.

Klarion gave him a nudge and he rotated slowly in the air until he was on his back. He tried wiggling a little, tried to see if he could control his direction at all, but had no luck. Klarion put a hand on his shoulder to stop his rotation. He gave the bird on Nightwing's chest a sharp poke.

"I wonder how it would have gone if it'd been _you_ in his position," he mused. He ran his finger down the center of Nightwing's chest, over his stomach, then tapped the utility belt. Nightwing forced himself not to react. "Hm," said Klarion. He tapped a few of the compartments in succession, like he was counting them off, and stopped when he got to Nightwing's hip. Nightwing held his breath waiting for Klarion to go rifling through his belt, but that wasn't Klarion's goal. Klarion's fingers brushed his thigh, then slowly drew one of his escrima sticks from their holster.

Nightwing barely had time to brace himself before Klarion had flicked on the power and thrust the stick into his side. His back arched and he choked on a scream as his brain shorted out. His suit was insulated, of course, but it couldn't protect him from the entire charge of an electric baton being held against his side. At least he was far enough off the floor that he couldn't hit his head.

When Klarion clicked the power off, Nightwing coughed out a laugh.

"You're such an asshole," he gasped. "All the powers of chaos and you use my own weapons. Jerk." At least Klarion hadn't turned it all the way up. His sticks had the range to stun average people… or knock out villains like Killer Croc.

"Just softening you up a little. Had a word with your home dimension. We've got places to be."

Nightwing tried not to let hope spark in his chest, but failed miserably. "We do? Where?"

"I'm not telling you. Let me see… allowing for time differences we should have… twenty more minutes? You'll thank me for this later; I'm sure you wouldn't want to be conscious for the trip between planes."

The electricity crackled back on.

 

Nightwing had passed out, mainly because Klarion had lost patience with the non-lethal voltage and the suit's resistance and simply cracked him across the face with the stick. When he came to he was listening to Klarion and _himself_ bicker, and wow did he hate hearing his own voice in this context as much as he ever did when he heard it on a recording.

He wasn't sure if Klarion had returned the escrima stick to its holster, but he could feel the utility belt still in place. That was something.

For the moment, he lay still and listened until it suddenly went silent. Had they left? His ears strained for any hint of another person, but all he could hear was his own heartbeat. It was an effort to stay relaxed, to keep up the fiction that he was unconscious, and he almost ruined it completely when a hand touched his face. His training held, though, and he managed not to move at all. Not that it mattered.

"I know you're awake," Dick said. Nightwing recognized the texture of his gauntlets as he slid one finger under the blindfold and gently pulled it up and away from his eyes. "And no, you're not blind. It's just completely dark in here."

Nightwing blinked several times behind the lenses of his mask. Dick was right; it was the solid, total darkness that came from being underground. That didn't stop him from widening his eyes, straining to see on instinct.

When Dick snapped his fingers, Nightwing flinched back. He wished there was a wall at his back; his other self could come at him from any direction and he'd never know until it was too late.

Then Nightwing blinked because… was it getting lighter? He thought he could make out the shape of someone crouching in front of him. He'd heard stories of people in total blackness hallucinating shapes and sounds because their brains were filling in gaps based on input from other senses, and he did know roughly where his counterpart should be. But no, his vision was actually improving. His brain hadn't made up that mask, larger than his own with way more pointy flourishes, nor the broken blue symbol on his chest. Something twisted in his own chest, seeing that.

The light was coming from one of the tunnels that he could now see branched out from this cavern. It looked like daylight. Dick had an arm outstretched in that direction and seemed to be pulling it into the cave. When there was enough light for Nightwing to see by, Dick stopped and sat cross-legged on the ground in front of him.

"You can sit up. I haven't decided what to do with you yet."

Nightwing cautiously rolled onto his back and sat up, bringing his knees up to his chest since there was really no other way to sit with his ankles tied. It also put him in a good position to get his arms around to the front in a hurry if he needed to. For now, it was better to have them behind his back, close to the back compartments of his utility belt.

"What are the choices?" he asked. Looking at himself was giving him a weird mental vertigo. He realized he didn't know his other self's timeline. Had both their incidents with Klarion happened at the same time? And if they were the same incident, what had gone so radically wrong for this version of Dick?

"Well, Klarion's not wrong when he says turning you into a chaos lord would help me out. But if you're not willing—"

"I'm not."

"Yeah. Maybe I'll try to convince you, but I know you pretty well. It would take forever. Especially since I'm guessing you know about what happened to Jason."

"And Tim."

Dick _hm_ 'd thoughtfully. "You don't have the whole story, though."

"Then tell me," Nightwing demanded. "I've been trying to wrap my head around how… how you and I can be the same in any way because I would _never_ —"

"You would, though," Dick said. "You can't say you would never, because I'm living proof that under the right circumstances… if it was this or be used to destroy your entire family, all your friends… you'd make the choice."

"If you became this to protect your family, how the hell do you explain Jason and Tim?" Nightwing asked.

"I don't. Not to you, not to anybody."

Nightwing scoffed. "Sounds like excuses to me. Face it, you've gone off the deep end. You're no better than the Joker and you're _worse_ than Klar—ghhk!"

Dick's hand shot out, fingers wrapping around Nightwing's throat. "I'll make you understand, then. After all, I know what broke me. I know what'll break you. It'll be worth the effort."

Despite the threat and the grip on his throat, Nightwing grinned. Dick had only a second to feel unease before something clasped around the wrist of the hand he was using to strangle Nightwing. Then it was like a heavy cotton blanket had dropped over his head; everything seemed muffled, duller. He let go of Nightwing's throat and stared at his wrist, where an iron cuff was now locked in place. The daylight he'd pulled into the cavern began retreating rapidly and he had just enough time to see the symbols scratched into the cuff before it went completely dark.

Nightwing grabbed Dick's wrist and touched it to the chaos magic binding his ankles. The magic disappeared the same way the bonds around Nightwing's wrists had moments ago when he'd slipped the cuff out of his utility belt while goading Dick into attacking him.

Dick twisted his wrist out of Nightwing's grip and bounded backward. So he couldn't see; he'd memorized the cavern's layout while chatting with Klarion and he knew where every stalagmite and tunnel entrance was.

Nightwing got to his feet a little more slowly and activated the nightvision lenses on his mask.

"You think you can take me just because you learned a few symbols from Fate?" Dick taunted, dropping into a crouch while Nightwing stood back, analyzing. Dick knew his way around the cave, but he couldn't see Nightwing. He'd want to goad him into giving his position away. "These look like a child's crayon drawings. It's like using dental floss to harness an elephant. I'll corrode it in no time."

Nightwing flung a few batarangs at Dick's feet, deliberately off-target. Dick sprang backward, perching on top of a stalagmite that had lost its tip at some point. Nightwing tackled him off it the instant he touched down.

"Stupid," Dick growled, landing heavily beneath Nightwing. "Gave up your advantage."

"Don't need it," Nightwing shot back, even as Dick jammed a knee into his gut. They rolled, and Nightwing made sure to grind Dick's wounded shoulder against the ground. Dick didn't miss the bruising on Nightwing's ribs, though, and managed to use Nightwing's wince to fold a leg between them and kick him off. Nightwing parted from him with a flung escrima stick – Klarion had been nice enough to put them back where they belonged after all – which connected with Dick's forehead solidly. Dick went down.

Nightwing stood over him. "Think my crayon drawings did okay. I'd've made you two matching ones but that's the only cuff from Klarion's collection that would fit in my belt." He pulled more conventional restraints from said belt and cuffed Dick's hands behind his back more securely. The cuffs could be picked, if Dick still carried such mundane tools, but Nightwing didn't intend to keep his eyes off him that long.

"So you've bought yourself some time. What are you going to do with me in the couple minutes you have before I get out of this?" Dick sneered.

"I just want to go home," Nightwing said, letting his exhaustion show. He'd been beaten, electrocuted, and hadn't slept in about thirty-six hours, unless you counted however long he'd been unconscious after Batman and then Klarion had knocked him out. He pulled Dick to his feet and turned him toward the tunnel that led outside, marching him forward with one hand on his shoulder and the other on the link between the handcuffs.

"And how do you plan to do that?" Dick asked caustically. "You'll notice Batman hasn't come for you. Terrible track record with rescuing Robins, that one."

"I don't need him to rescue me."

"When I get this cuff off you'll be begging for him before the end."

"Speaking from experience?"

Dick snarled and snapped his head back, but Nightwing had been expecting it. He moved out of the way and squeezed the slash Teekl had left on Dick's shoulder. Dick stumbled forward.

"All right," Nightwing said, steering Dick down the tunnel toward the exit. "That was shitty of me. Sorry. But I just want to point out that you didn't need him to rescue you either."

"Yeah," Dick said through gritted teeth. "Clearly."

Nightwing sighed. His nightvision was starting to green out, so he turned it off and was relieved to see daylight, finally. The mouth of the cave was a jagged gash in the side of a mountain. There was a small outcropping outside of it, but no path down or up. Dick laughed.

"So. Planning to fly back to Gotham?" he asked.

"Probably," Nightwing said. "I activated my distress beacon as soon as I woke up. I think the mountain was probably interfering with it, but it should be okay now." He shoved Dick into a sitting position. "All we have to do is wait."

"Your distress beacon?" Dick's tone was heavy with disbelief. "You're kidding. Even if it's the same frequency here as on your Earth what makes you think anyone is even listening?"

"Batman had me in his cave for a couple hours, and he spent part of it thinking I was an enemy. Pretty sure he knows my tech better than me at this point, and if he didn't start scanning for the beacon the moment I vanished I'll eat Green Arrow's hat." Nightwing dropped down to sit next to Dick, feet dangling over the edge.

"Well then," Dick said. "Guess we'll see if he's fast enough this time."

Nightwing eyed the cuff. Did his hasty etchings, gleaned from what he'd seen of his own bindings in the Batcave, seem shallower? "Guess so. Hey, you know what this is a good time for?"

"Don't say bonding."

"Bonding! Gosh, it's like you know me," Nightwing said with a brilliant smile.

"I'm not telling you what happened."

"All right. Will you tell me why you can't take your mask off?"

Dick started. "Who told you— Batman. Right. Well, I don't know. Probably some kind of subconscious Jungian statement," he said carelessly.

"I kind of thought it might vanish if I put that cuff on you."

"That would be like expecting Klarion's hair to fall out when you defeat him. You didn't change who I am just because you tied me up."

Nightwing stared at his hands and didn't answer.

"Ah," said Dick. "You're still having trouble with the idea that this _is_ who I am."

"It doesn't have to be. Batman and Doctor Fate can help you. They have a plan."

"They have a _hypothesis_. What if I like who I am? Will they change me anyway? At least Klarion waited for me to agree."

"Is consent given under duress really consent?" Nightwing asked. He meant it rhetorically, but Dick just rolled his eyes and twisted to show Nightwing his bound hands.

"You tell me. It was good enough for the Lords of Chaos," Dick said, wiggling his fingers at Nightwing.

"I think Batman has a higher standard."

"But you're not sure. I know you're not, because I'm not."

"This is really a discussion you need to have with him," Nightwing said with a frown.

Dick flexed his wrist, as much as he could. "Then he'd better hurry up, because I'm not waiting around much longer."

Nightwing nodded. It was foolish, but he didn't feel afraid. He couldn't imagine himself hurting… himself. He also couldn't imagine killing Jason or beating Tim to within an inch of his life, though, so… doubly foolish. He kicked his feet a bit and next to him Dick squinted up into the empty sky. Then they both started talking at once.

"How did you—"

"What did you—"

They both stopped, Nightwing smiling wryly and Dick looking annoyed.

"An answer for an answer?" Nightwing offered.

"Depends what you're asking."

"I was going to ask about my home. What exactly did you do there? And why do you smell like a pizzeria?"

Dick grinned at him. "Took Jason on a little date."

"I feel like that was meant to be threatening but given the context it seems like you just went out for Italian."

"That might have been a better strategy, in retrospect," Dick mused.

"Seriously, is he okay? You didn't hurt him, did you?"

"Knocked him and Babs around a bit. Stabbed Tim a little. I'm sure they're fine."

Nightwing clenched his fists. "If I get back and find out they're not, I'm coming right back over here and kicking your ass into orbit."

"Sure, sure. Your turn. I want to know how you escaped."

Nightwing wasn't quite ready to let the topic go. He glared at Dick for a few moments longer, but Dick just raised his eyebrows expectantly. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now and Dick's questions might provide valuable information themselves. "Escaped…?" Nightwing asked.

"Escaped Klarion," Dick said impatiently. "How come you're sitting here, all earnest and human and ridiculous, while I ended up like this?"

Nightwing wondered how many times in his life he was going to have to say the words 'tried to seduce Klarion.' "I… annoyed him so much he let me go."

Dick stared at him. "He let you go," he repeated.

"I mean, dropped me in the middle of Gotham severely wounded and put the Joker on my tail, but… yeah, more or less. Could have been worse. Obviously."

"So you got _lucky_ ," Dick growled. "It's not something you did differently, some skill, some trick I didn't think of."

"I can't say that for sure unless I know what happened to you," Nightwing pointed out.

"Oh, Klarion let me go, too. Dumped me right into the Light's hands. One minute I save his cat's life, the next minute I'm the Light's newest science experiment."

"That's sort of the same," Nightwing mused. "For me, it happened right after I saved Teekl, too, but Klarion figured out I was sort of… lying to him. About, um, how much I liked him. And dropped me back in Gotham out of pique, I think. I wonder why yours reacted differently."

Dick scowled. "I don't think he figured me out – not until later. Saved the cat, got these cool new scars on my back in return, and then he gives me this _look_ , like maybe he's gonna eat me or something, and next thing I know we're at a Light base and Klarion's talking about how he has a _new recruit_. I didn't have a lot of opportunity for information gathering after that."

Nightwing nodded, filing the details away. "Can't blame you for that. I don't get it, though."

"Yeah, you've made that clear."

"No, I mean, you seem pissed about what happened to you, that it ended up this way."

Dick looked at him like Nightwing had just very seriously informed him that the Earth was flat. "No," he deadpanned. "I am absolutely thrilled and have no regrets. I've always wanted to be a walking danger to the entire universe."

"I'm _saying_ ," Nightwing went on, though he was starting to understand exactly how annoying he was to the bad guys. "That if you hate it, why not let Batman fix it?"

Dick's laugh was harsh. "Batman's in denial. Whatever long shot he's schemed up, when it doesn't work he'll just lock me away in the cave, a living memorial to Nightwing. Either way, it won't bring—" Dick stuttered to a halt. "It's pointless," he finished softly, though Nightwing could tell his mind had gone elsewhere. The angle of his jaw said he had the tip of his tongue between his teeth, which meant he was thinking. Nightwing hoped it was about actually taking Batman up on this hypothetical cure, because if Batman took much longer to show up, their best hope of getting their hands on Dick again would be him turning himself in.

He was about to gently prod to get a measure of Dick's thoughts when he heard a familiar crackle and rush of wind. It wasn't the Batplane. He stood, looking down the side of the mountain at a streak of yellow and red angling straight up toward them, trailing dust. The Flash? The streak skidded to a stop between Nightwing and Dick.

"Whoa, dude, okay, shit, is this a 'which one is the real one' situation?" Wally asked. Dick, still sitting, looked up at him with a resigned air.

"Wally?" Nightwing said. He reached out without thinking and Wally took a step back, hands up.

"Whoa there. You the real one?"

"We're both the real one, dipshit. What are you doing here? You're supposed to be retired," Dick said sourly.

"Uh, distress beacon, my scary friend. Been beaming for several minutes now and no one's answered? Yeah, I pulled out the old tights for that. What do you mean you're both the real one?"

Dick gave Nightwing a _You explain, I'm sick of it_ look, so Nightwing obliged. "I'm the alternate universe version of him. It's my beacon. Guess it does broadcast on the same frequency."

"Correction: it used to. No one really monitors this one anymore, not since… well, looks like you know all about that." Wally eyed the symbol on Nightwing's chest and the restraints on Dick and relaxed a little. "I set up some alerts just in case." He looked down at Dick. "Just in case you needed help."

"I'm a chaos lord, Wally, and you got out. You should stay that way."

"So you really are Wally West," Nightwing said. "And you're… you and Artemis?"

"Living the life of sun, surf, and sand. What's with you?"

Nightwing threw his arms around Wally in a fierce hug.

"Oh God," Wally said. "I'm dead, aren't I? That's depressing."

"You saved the world, though," Nightwing said, voice only slightly muffled by Wally's shoulder.

"Of course I did. From what?"

"The Reach."

Dick scoffed. "The Reach killed you? So lame."

Nightwing pulled away from Wally and glared at Dick. "No one else could have done it. He saved the entire planet."

"Yeah, too bad the planet didn't have a chaos lord protecting it in your reality," Dick snapped.

Nightwing blinked and Wally looked a little ill. But before he could properly process the fact that Wally was only alive because of the choice Dick had made, a strong wind suddenly kicked across the ledge accompanied by the whine of engines Nightwing would know anywhere. The Batplane decloaked, hovering in front of them, and the hatch lifted. "Get in," Batman said.

"Figures," Dick griped. Nightwing grinned, pulled him up by the arm, and practically tossed him into the cockpit, clambering over a wing after him.

"Uh, me too?" Wally asked.

"No," Batman said, and the hatch snapped shut.

"Cold, B," Nightwing said. Batman passed back a sturdier pair of etched manacles and Nightwing snapped them around Dick's wrists in place of his makeshift one and the ordinary restraints.

"He'll probably make it back to Gotham before us," Batman said. Indeed, Wally was already streaking down the mountain as the Batplane banked and headed east. "Status?"

"Bruised, tired, and hungry. Other me has some nasty gashes and a martyr complex."

"Don't forget a headache from listening to you talk," Dick muttered.

"I'll need a full report of what happened after Klarion took you from Roanoke for my records," Batman said, ignoring Dick.

"Of course," Nightwing said. "You recording? I'll give it now."

 


	5. Chapter 5

Nightwing filled Batman in on what had happened in Klarion's workshop and the cave. Batman informed him that Zatanna was fine, though he didn't go into any detail in light of Dick's presence. When they got back to the Batcave, Batman steered Dick away toward the holding cells. Alfred appeared while he was gone to let Nightwing know that Wally was upstairs eating them out of house and home. He didn't seem surprised to see Nightwing there in the cave, though he did lay a fond hand on his shoulder and gave it a small squeeze when Nightwing passed by to fetch Wally.

"Hey, we're back," he said, poking his head into the kitchen where Wally was polishing off a roast beef sandwich.

"Oh, I see _you_ get to break the 'no costumes upstairs' rule," Wally said. He was wearing an old Gotham Academy t-shirt and sweat pants, his feet bare. "Alfred made me change before he'd feed me."

"Alternate universe privileges," Nightwing said.

"Yeah. This must be kinda weird for you, huh?"

Nightwing bit his lip. He was trying not to think about it. "I— it's really good to see you again, Walls."

"Yeah, you too. I mean you-you. Chaos lord you is… well, we don't exactly invite him around for game night."

"But you were still watching for his beacon."

Wally shrugged sheepishly. "I just couldn't shake the feeling he was still in there somewhere, you know? The superhero life, things can change so fast. If there was ever an opportunity, even with all he's done…"

"Yeah, I get it. We've got someone back home who's coming back from some pretty bad stuff and we all… well, _I_ wish I could have done more, but I'm doing what I can now."

Wally nodded and got up to follow Nightwing back down to the cave. "Hey. Sorry I died."

"Sorry I turned into a chaos lord."

"Apology accepted. Let's see about getting you home, yeah? Though why you would want to go back to a world without me in it…"

Nightwing rolled his eyes and gave Wally a shove. He zipped out of the way at the last second, leaving Nightwing stumbling to the side, and soon they were both play-wrestling their way down the stairs to the cave like they – or versions of themselves – had done a hundred times before.

Downstairs, the other Dick was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Batman. But Zatanna was sitting on the edge of one of the hospital cots, looking thoughtful. The Helmet of Fate was beside her.

"Zee!" Nightwing exclaimed. "Are you all right?"

Zatanna grinned at him and stood. Then she saw Wally. "Oh, sure, you come out of retirement for him."

"Like you don't see me every other week." He turned to Nightwing. "She and Artemis and M'gann and Rocket have Girls' Night, which as far as I can tell means playing Dungeons and Dragons _without me_."

"You meta game. If M'gann can avoid it, you have no excuse," said Zatanna with no remorse.

Nightwing watched them go back and forth with the most bizarre mixture of joy and sadness rising in his chest. He shoved it down.

"I can't believe Batman leaves you unsupervised in the Cave," he said.

"I think he knows there's no point in worrying about it when I can just portal in and out as Fate," Zatanna said. "He's pretty close to figuring that out, though. Don't tell him I said that."

"Noted," Batman said, looming suddenly behind her. She scowled.

"Is he— the other me—" Nightwing started.

"Secure," Batman said. "I need to ask you a few follow-up questions."

"Sure. Shoot."

Batman looked at Wally and Zatanna. It wasn't quite a glare, but it was pointed. "Right," said Zatanna. "It's probably about time for Wally to check in with Artemis."

"I called her as soon as—"

Zatanna grabbed his ear. "I'm offering to be your own personal Skype service. That's not something I do for just anyone, West," she said, marching them off toward the vehicle exit – which happened to be near an exuberant waterfall.

Nightwing snorted. "All right. What's up, B?"

Batman was quiet for a few moments. Nightwing was rarely completely at a loss for what Batman was thinking these days – at least _his_ Batman – but he had no idea what might be coming now. Finally, Batman spoke, just one word. "Jason."

Ah. Of course. "What do you want to know?"

"How? He died in your world, too. How did he come back? Is there something I missed?" His tone was clinical, simply gathering information… until he hit the last word. Batman's voice dropped, went breathy, like he'd been punched in the diaphragm.

Nightwing hesitated. If he told him, would Batman exhume Jason's body, go running to the nearest Pit? It seemed unlikely; Batman knew about Ra's and the Pits, so surely the idea had crossed his mind already. And if he told him, if Batman knew what to expect, and it happened here later… maybe it would go more smoothly.

"It was a Lazarus Pit," Nightwing said. "Ra's felt— well, he _said_ he felt guilty for the role he played in Jason's death; I'm not sure he didn't have an ulterior motive. But Bruce, it went wrong. You know the Pit isn't usually used to bring back the dead. Jason's suffered, he's still suffering. It's been years and he's only just really coming back to us…"

"Was it worth it?" Batman demanded.

"To me? Of course. I'm glad he's back. But I'm selfish. Jason might have a different view of things." Batman didn't answer. Nightwing could practically hear the implacable progression of his thoughts. He'd be considering logistics of getting to a Pit. The time that had passed. The risk. He would come to the conclusion that he shouldn't act on this information; then he would feel guilty about not doing it.

"Hey, Bruce," Nightwing said. "Before you make any decisions, talk to someone about it, okay? Talk to Clark, maybe."

Batman gave him a startled look, then the faintest of smiles. "I see that's the same in your world, then. All right. I won't make any decisions in isolation. But you need to tell me exactly what happened."

Nightwing sighed. In for a penny, hanged for a sheep and all that. He told Bruce the story of Jason Todd, the Joker, and the Red Hood.

 

It took a surprisingly short time. Batman didn't ask questions, just listened. When they were done, Zatanna and Wally came back over.

"Time to go home?" Wally asked.

"Yeah," Nightwing said. "Back to Roanoke?"

"Back to Roanoke," Zatanna confirmed, picking up the helmet.

"Hang on," Nightwing said. He hugged her quickly. "Wanted to do that before you become Fate again." Then he did the same to Wally. "There," Nightwing said. "Just in case something ridiculous happens at Roanoke and I don't get the chance."

"If you go now, before Klarion realizes we have Nightwing in custody, you'll minimize the risk of something going wrong," Batman said

"Not coming, B?"

"It shouldn't be necessary. I want to keep an eye on our Nightwing. I— Hm." This last was because Nightwing had subjected Batman to a hug as well. Batman's cape fell around Nightwing's shoulders as Batman returned the hug, briefly but firmly. "Be safe," he said, too low for anyone but Nightwing to hear.

Nightwing grinned and stepped away. "All right. I'm ready."

 *

The transfer between one Roanoke and the other went incredibly smoothly. Of course, that meant Nightwing turned up in his own world completely alone in the middle of a clearing off the coast of North Carolina with no means of transportation other than his feet. At least his coms would work now, though.

"Nightwing to… uh, anyone, really. I could use a lift?"

The line crackled to life with exclamations, plus a few comments over the Team's psychic link. They seemed to be about equal parts welcoming him home and yelling at him for worrying them. He had about half a dozen offers for transport, ranging from teleportation to alien vehicles, before the Batplane descended from the cloud cover directly above him and discharged a line. Typically, there had been no comment from Batman.

"Never mind, guys, I've got a ride. See you all later," he said, putting a foot in the stirrup. The line retracted as soon as he had a grip on it. Nightwing was clambering into the plane seconds later. Batman was at the controls.

Nightwing stood next to the pilot seat and leaned against it. "Good to see you, B."

"Your double?" Batman asked.

"Secure in his own world."

"Are you injured?" All business, eyes on the controls setting the path home.

"Some bumps and bruises. You hit hard."

That got a reaction. Batman stiffened, back going straighter, and looked up at him. "Tell me." Not _report_ or an order for a debrief. Nightwing rested a hand on Batman's shoulder, then settled into the co-pilot's seat.

"The other me is a chaos lord," he began.

 

The Batplane was fast, and they were back to Gotham before Nightwing had quite finished. He had just gotten to the part where he'd ransacked Klarion's workshop for tools to use against him when the plane touched down in the cave. Batman opened the cockpit and Nightwing figured he'd just keep talking as they changed and showered down, just as they'd done plenty of other times. It was late afternoon here, and Nightwing could seriously use some sleep. He suspected Batman could as well.

But Nightwing trailed to a stop when they left the hangar and passed the infirmary area, because there was Jason, right there in the cave like he hadn't been since his explosive return from the dead. Nightwing could practically feel the tension ratchet up several levels when Batman saw him too.

Jason was slouched in a chair with his arms crossed, feet kicked up on another chair beside one of the sturdier hospital beds they had, one of the ones they used when the injured or ill party would probably be there for a while. In the bed was Tim, propped up with an armada of pillows to keep him from lying on his shoulder. His right arm was in a sling and strapped down to his torso. Despite how incredibly uncomfortable the position looked, his head was tipped forward and he was clearly out cold.

Jason's expression went blank when Nightwing and Batman approached. Nightwing saw the muscles in his shoulders tense, though he didn't make any move to get up.

Batman's eyes rested on Tim, but before he could say anything or ask something tactless, Barbara walked in, brandishing a paperback.

"Knew I left my copy somewhere upstairs. Here, you'll love it," she said. She brushed past Nightwing and Batman and dropped the book in Jason's lap. _The Woman in White_. "Thanks for keeping an eye on Tim while I wrapped up Fakewing's mess." She gave Jason's shoulder a brief squeeze as she passed him, taking up a stance on the other side of Tim's bed and then finally staring down Batman, daring him to say something about Jason's presence.

"Clearly I missed a great deal while I was off-world," Batman said finally. "I'll expect full mission debriefs from each of you." A minuscule pause. "Jason, would you remind Tim when he's lucid?" _Stay. Work with us. I trust you with this injured Robin_.

Jason started slightly, thumb running over the edges of the pages as the book in his hands bent slightly. "Uh, yeah. Not like I've got anything better to do."

Nightwing picked up the file with Alfred's notes about Tim's injury and gave Barbara the slightest of nods. _Impressive._ She gave him the slightest of shrugs in return. _I know_. He grinned, but it faded instantly when he looked more closely at Tim's file.

"Ugh," he said. "'Stabbed him a little'. Right. I should have hit him more." At least Tim was unconscious because of pain meds, though, and not from the injury itself. He looked from Jason to Barbara. The latter was clearly fine, but was Jason sitting just to be insouciant, or because he was injured? "He said he knocked you around a little, too. You okay?"

Jason scoffed. "Nothing I couldn't handle." Babs cleared her throat pointedly and Jason rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine, Batgirl and Robin saved my ass before it could get really bad. I'll put it all in the _report_." He heaped as much disdain as he could muster on the word, but it wasn't lost on any of them that this meant he actually intended to follow through with one.

"Ahem." A polite throat-clearing came from behind them. "Had I known the infirmary would be transforming into a parlor I would have furnished it more appropriately," Alfred said lightly. "As it is, might I suggest that Master Timothy requires rest? As, I suspect, do most of you."

They filed out sheepishly, leaving Alfred to look after Tim. Batman extracted the rest of the report from Nightwing as they began the gradual process of transitioning from patrol-mode to home-mode. Babs and Jason stuck around, listening to the second half of Dick's story.

Bruce eventually turned back to the infirmary after giving Dick strict orders to go upstairs and get some sleep before even thinking about returning to Bludhaven. Barbara declared her intent to stay as well, and both she and Dick herded Jason up the stairs without giving him the chance to feel awkward about it. Dick wasn't sure what room Jason ended up in, but he went straight to his own and collapsed face-down on the bed, not moving for several hours.

When he did wake, it was like every bruise had woken with him. His brain was ready to move even if his body wasn't, though, and his mind spun rapidly through recent and long-past events, playing them over and over; decisions that had ended up with Jason dead and Wally still alive. His other self had insisted that there were limits he would push in any universe, deals he would make under the right circumstances, and Dick was starting to understand that. Seeing Wally had been…

His hand was halfway to his phone before he realized he was planning on calling Artemis. Then he stopped. Phone calls between them when they missed Wally weren't unusual; even if neither of them ever said his name, they knew why the other was calling. But it would do her exactly zero good to hear about this.

Dick shoved himself to the edge of the bed and rolled to his feet, wincing. Every muscle felt outlined in heat, stretched to snapping even though he'd barely moved. He peeled off the soft cotton shirt he'd changed into after finally stripping off his costume before sleeping and was greeted with a riot of purpling splotches across his back and sides. His suit had protected him from developing any electrical burns as a result of Klarion's playing with his escrima sticks, but a good deal of the bruising was definitely from that encounter. He also had defensive bruising along his forearms from fighting the other world's Batman, and an impressive crescent of mottled and broken capillaries spreading out from his temple and curling around his eye. That was going to be a fun one for Dick Grayson to explain.

He sighed and moved to the window to open it. It was the middle of the night now, but nice out, and his room always felt a little stifling when he hadn't been there in a while. Dead air. He stuck his head out the window and closed his eyes as a warm breeze lifted his hair slightly and brought the scents of grass and soil to him.

There was a snicker from above. "You look like a Disney princess," Jason said. Dick twisted to look up, ignoring the stiffness that said this was probably a bad idea. He stretched a little further just to see how much it hurt.

Jason was sitting on the edge of the roof, feet dangling over and hands braced at his sides, smirking down at Dick. Dick grinned back and pulled himself over the sill, grabbed a drainpipe, some decorative stonework, pushed off a shutter, and was on the roof next to Jason.

"Jesus," Jason said.

"What?" Dick asked. That hadn't been anything _like_ impressive. Then he realized he was still shirtless, his injuries clearly visible between the moonlight and the spillover from the grounds lighting. He scoffed and dropped to sit next to Jason. "Looks worse than it is." Dick was barefoot, but Jason had his boots on. Had most of his gear on, in fact. "Tim wake up?" He knew Jason would know, the same way he knew Jason hadn't slept.

"Yeah, he's filing his report like a good little sol— I mean. It's not like it's gonna be different from Babs'."

"You do yours yet?"

"Nah." The heel of a boot scuffed against brick. "Forgot how hard it can be."

Dick nodded. There were always missions like that. Cataloging significant injuries could be like receiving them again, could force up emotions you hadn't let yourself feel in the field. He figured that was part of the reason Bruce was so insistent on these reports. That was also why Dick preferred giving his reports verbally. They had excellent transcription software, and sometimes he just didn't want to look at certain things closely enough to forge them into coherent sentences with his own hands. But talking had always come easily to Dick.

"What did he do?"

Jason glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, then went back to studying the grounds. "Oh, you know. Your standard object-of-a-dark-ritual abduction."

Dick wished that didn't illustrate it so clearly, but unfortunately, it did. They'd all been through _that_ at one point or another and knew more or less what it generally entailed. "Great. So chaos-me is not only kind of nuts, he's unoriginal."

"Also into me."

"Into— he— what?" Dick sputtered.

"Oh yeah," Jason said with a grin, leaning back. "Definitely into me." He arched an eyebrow at Dick.

"I don't know what you want me to say to that."

Jason shrugged. "Just something to think about, dickiebird."

"He didn't— Are you— what did he do?" Dick asked again, a little more urgently this time. Jason was being lighthearted about it, teasing, but he often deflected attention away from deeper problems that way.

Jason looked startled, though. "No. No, nothing like that. I promise, Dick, I'm fine. He wanted me to become his anchor, like Teekl is for Klarion. Kicked me around some, a little flirting, a little threatening, nothing else."

"I'm sorry, Jay."

Jason rolled his eyes. "That's one of the dumber things I've ever heard come out of your mouth, and that's saying something. It wasn't you, idiot."

 _You can't say you never would_. "Sure. I know that."

"Yeah, you sound like it," Jason said sarcastically. "Let me guess: you found out what happened to me in that world."

"Not in any detail, but yeah. Found out from the Batman there. He was… not happy." Dick's arm went across his stomach, hand spread against his ribs without realizing what he was doing.

"Is Bruce ever happy?" Jason asked the sky. Then he blinked. "Wait, _he_ did that to you?" He looked like he was going to jump up, march downstairs, and give Bruce a piece of his mind (and maybe a piece of his fists as well), never mind that this was the wrong Bruce. Dick put a hand on his shoulder.

"He thought I was the other one. As far as I can tell he's been looking for a way to contain or change him back ever since it happened. He thinks he's got one, but…" Dick trailed off.

"But I'm still dead."

"Not you, Jay," Dick reminded him. "But, look. Batman, he asked me… he knew you came back, in this universe. He asked me how. I told him. I don't know if I did the right thing."

"You're asking _me_ if you did the right thing?" Jason was incredulous.

"Who else could I ask? I'm glad you're alive. Like, really glad. Even though I know maybe… if you'd had a choice…" Dick tensed, certain that he'd seriously stuck his foot in this very sensitive subject and ready for Jason to shove him off the roof or something. But Jason just looked thoughtful.

"If you'd asked me back then, after everything, after I blew up that building and the Joker and all of that, I don't know what I would have said. I thought I knew why I was brought back, but it turned out to be wrong. Some days, I just want to set everything on fire and spit on the ashes." Jason's tone was fierce, and he was gripping the ledge hard enough that Dick thought he could hear the leather of his gloves creak. "And I know, I _know_ that Bruce is gonna get on my case as soon as he's done worrying about Tim, and we'll fight, and everything will go back to how it was yesterday." Jason sighed in an extended exhale and relaxed his grip.

"But then again," he went on. "Nights like this? That aren't yesterday or tomorrow? It makes me feel like maybe it _could_ be that simple. Like, why shouldn't life just be moments like this all strung together." He looked over at Dick and smiled, an actual smile that Dick had only ever seen on Robin's face, never on Red Hood's. "Nights like this, I think it's good to be… home." He said the word with a slight rise on the end, like he was asking a question, or wasn't sure he'd used it correctly.

"Yeah," Dick replied. "It really is, isn't it?" He wasn't sure what that other Batman would do with the information about Jason's resurrection. He wasn't sure what would become of that other version of himself. He hoped it all worked out. But that was their world, and full of their problems. It was enough to be here, on this rooftop, in this world, sitting next to a Jason who wasn't dead, a family that was healing itself, and a settling certainty that everything, on this planet at least, on this night, was going to be just fine.

It was enough, and more than enough. It was home.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter will be just a quick epilogue (because I'm me and I can't resist an epilogue).


	6. Epilogue

Dick stood in the middle of the holding cell, muscles tight with anger that was slowly seeping away into a vaguely-nauseous worried feeling. Batman had manhandled him in here and left him. Not that Dick had put up much of a fight; with his hands and his power bound he knew he was no match for Batman. But now the reality of his situation was feeling a little heavier. Batman really was going to subject him to whatever crazy experiment Fate had come up with, and wasn't even going to speak to him first. It was galling.

He turned slowly in the center of the room, examining his confines though he was already familiar with them. The cave only had a few holding cells, and they were rarely used; mostly they came in handy when someone needed to sweat out a toxin or be quarantined for one reason or another. Dick's cell was a ten foot by ten foot square, with prison-grade fixtures that could neither be used as a weapon nor for self-harm. He felt the panic wanting to rise and informed it firmly that he was a _chaos lord_ and he wasn't going to lose it just because this room was a little similar to another one he'd been held in for several months a lifetime ago.

That didn't really work, so he looked for something else to focus on. Differences. He could feel symbols like the ones around his wrists pulsing near the door and the reinforced observation window, though they were on the other side. Batman was worried about Klarion coming for him. Dick wasn't sure if he hoped for that himself, or if he was grateful for the protection. _I'm getting bored of our game_ , Klarion had said. And then Dick had completely, utterly failed to do anything remotely like provide him with a challenge. His other self had beaten him easily and would soon be a dimension away, so maybe he should just let Batman remove him from the equation, take him out of Klarion's league and hopefully off his radar.

Then again, Dick had things to do and he couldn't do them if he stayed locked in this cell, which he was pretty sure was going to happen since there was no way Fate would be able to turn him back. If there was a way to turn Lords of Chaos into regular people, the Lords of Order would have _won_ their eternal war against chaos by now. So like it or not, Klarion was Dick's best hope of escaping bat-custody, even if it was a frying pan-fire sort of situation. A much too familiar one.

He kicked the wall, then slid down against it, working his wrists in the manacles. He could try dislocating his thumb. The cuffs covered several inches of forearm very tightly, though, so not only would it hurt like hell, he wasn't at all certain it would provide enough leeway for him to slide out. He scraped the cuffs against the smooth concrete wall, drawing sparks. Great. If he had about a year, he might file away the etchings.

He did it again anyway, just to feel like he was doing something. Movement on the other side of the observation window caught his eye and he turned to glare at whoever had come to gawk at him, only to find Teekl watching him curiously.

Dick jumped to his feet, certain Batman was about to descend on the holding cells like wrath incarnate. But Teekl simply raised a paw, claws glinting, and swiped at the nearest of the symbols. Her claws dug into the wall and carved gouges right through it. Dick felt the wards flicker and took a step back as she did it again.

When the wards had had enough holes punched in them, Klarion appeared in the cell in a swirl of black energy, Teekl now in his arms.

"You," he said to Dick. "Are a disappointment. Come on. I'm gonna throw you at a singularity and watch the pretty colors as you unravel worlds."

"Yeah," said Dick, stepping into arm's reach of Klarion. "All right."

Klarion had time to look surprised for half a second before Dick slipped a battered, poorly etched cuff around one spindly wrist; the cuff that Nightwing had used to subdue his powers, and that he had quietly slipped into Dick's utility belt when replacing it with the sturdier manacles on the Batplane.

" _What_?" Klarion raged, his form boiling out of its typical edges and then snapping back, writhing into lines of energy and then solidifying, melting and reforming, all around the solid point of that cuff. Teekl yowled, fur standing on end. Dick waited for Klarion's face to manifest and then punched him. It was a little awkward, with his own wrists cuffed together, but effective. Klarion went down hard.

Teekl hissed and flung herself at Dick's face, claws out. Dick raised his arms to defend and let Teekl rake those claws down the manacles instead. He felt his power curl back into him like a wave.

"Thanks, cat," he said. The manacles fell from his wrists with a thought. Then he turned the floor of the cell into liquid around Klarion's wrist, just long enough for his hand to sink down, and re-solidified it, hiding the cuff so that Teekl couldn't scrape off the sigils any time soon. He threw an arc of power at the wall, carving a note:

 _To Fate,_ ♥ _Dick_

Then he left. He had a grave to visit.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you thought :) 
> 
> You can also find me on [Tumblr](http://solomonara.tumblr.com/)


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